Wind, baby, and grass /
rustling sheets into night /
undulating dreams.
Haiku to you Thursday: “Wind”
Wind, baby, and grass /
rustling sheets into night /
undulating dreams.
Filed under Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
Writing tip Wednesday: “Bits of Wisdom”
Here’s a collection of wisdoms from the star-studded panels and sessions at ThrillerFest by way of Writer’s Digest.
“Protect your voice and your vision. If going on the Internet and reading Internet reviews is bad for you, don’t do it. … Do what gets you to write and not what blocks you. … Don’t take any guff off anybody.”
–Anne Rice
“I encourage every writer to write the book that only you can write.” It’s one thing to be respectful of trends but it’s another to express your unique viewpoint in your book. “Don’t be a copycat. … The last thing I want is to see something and feel, Didn’t I just read this someplace else?”
–Michaela Hamilton, editor-in-chief of Citadel/executive editor of Kensington
“The book has to deliver. … It isn’t a particular element that I’m looking for, but I want to be transported.”
–Lisa Gallagher, literary agent
“You may not think that you have an interesting story to tell and you may not think there’s something fascinating in your story, but there is.”
–Heather Drucker, publicist (HarperCollins), on how everyone has a unique personal publicity hook they can use to promote their book
“You can be as complex as you want as long as you’re clear about it.”
–David Morrell, bestselling author of First Blood
For more, go to http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/9-inspirational-thrillerfest?et_mid=628280&rid=3087253
Filed under Writing Tip Wednesday
Seven Things You Should Know About the Wackiest “Fiscal Crisis” Yet | News & Notes, What Matters Today | BillMoyers.com
I’m waiting for the Loch Ness Monster to sing the National Anthem at the World Series. Are you?
Filed under GOP, Republicans
National Punctuation Day
Happy National Punctuation Day!
http://www.nationalpunctuationday.com/
Why not take a period (.) to dinner? Maybe even two: (.) (.) You know, take them out for some period food.
Filed under holiday
Monday (morning) writing joke: “Stuck”
There once was writer of plays /
who could not get his character his way. /
“Oh, no,” they said. /
He shook his head in dread /
and he’s stuck in Act I to this day.
Filed under Monday morning writing joke
The blathering idiot and falling
Love hurts
The blathering idiot didn’t have an answer when she asked him a week ago, and he didn’t have an answer now.
It had always been the woman who fell out of love with him or maybe had gotten fed up with him, had her fill, and walked away, saying she had fallen out of love with him.
He did wonder now if Xenia asking was because she had heard something Zoey, Xenia’s mother. Had said.
Was Zoey falling out of love with him?
If so, what was he supposed to do? In the past – though there were not many of them, there were a few – the woman had announced it after the fall had taken place, saying things like: “It’s not you, it’s me.” Or, “I think we should spend some time apart.” This type of announcement usually came after they had already been apart a month.
In other words, the fall had already taken place and his heart’s shins were the ones getting barked.
“I hear that when you fall in love, that can hurt too,” Xenia said. “Has that happened to you?”
They were sitting in an ice cream parlor, the leaves already falling, but the temperature staying up. At least it felt that way to him. She had come back to the subject she had started talking about last week, just before he took her back to Zoey. He liked spending time with Xenia. She usually didn’t judge him, or at least didn’t judge him too harshly.
He had to think about that, too. Had he fallen in love with Zoey or had they just sort of got along well enough to stay in each other’s company – at least some of the time?
The blathering idiot felt a sudden desire – a pang really – to call Zoey and say with as much force as he could muster, “I love you!” Blurt it out even before she said hello.
Yes, that’s what he would do. He wouldn’t think about it anymore: he’d just do it.
Right now.
He’d just do it: right now. In person!
He bolted up from the chair, knocking it over. “Come on.”
Xenia had not finished her sundae. She brought a spoon full of sundae up to her mouth, and said in a muffled voice: “Where?”
“You’ll see,” he said.
They walked west and as they got closer to the house Xenia lived in, she said, “It’s too early to take me home. Mom’s still studying.”
“This will only take a minute.”
“No,” Xenia said. “You don’t understand. Mom’s studying.”
The blathering idiot stopped outside the gate at the end of the sidewalk that led up to Zoey’s house.
He paused and looked at Xenia. She was frowning and he thought he saw some sweat on her forehead.
“Is she … ah … studying with somebody?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what exactly?”
Xenia looked away for a moment, then looked back at the blathering idiot.
“She … ah … told me not to tell you this.” Xenia shifted from one foot to the other. “But she’s sleeping.”
“Sleeping?”
“But you were asking me about falling in love and falling out of love.”
“Oh, that. That’s ’cause I sleep in a bunk bed and I keep falling out and hurting myself. I told Mom it’s because I keep having bad dreams. Mom says she can’t wait until I’m old enough to fall in love. Then, she says, I’ll really have bad dreams and hurt myself.”
Filed under blathering idiot, love, Story by author
Photo finish Friday: “Pink”
Think pink
Bobo thought he had seen it all. Then he saw this: a big bright pink elephant. He had to have it. It would perfect for his yard. His wife couldn’t object. It was the 1,000 pound gorilla he wanted to keep in the guest bedroom. It was an elephant. It would stay outside. And it would be the perfect complement to her pink flamingos — all 200 hundred of them strewn all over their lawn.
Filed under Photo by author, Photo Finish Friday
Haiku to you Thursday: “Sunday”
If my lover were /
Sunday, passion’s radiance /
would subsume heaven.
Filed under Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
Writing tip Wednesday: “From on high”
REWRITING? TRY SOME “HIGHER EDITING”
By DAN POLLOCK
“Do you like Kipling?” goes the old joke. Answer: “I don’t know, you naughty boy, I’ve never kippled.”
At age 23 Rudyard Kipling’s sensational debut was comparable to that of Charles Dickens. “The star of the hour,” aid Henry James when Rudyard was only 25. “Too clever to live,” said Robert Louis Stevenson.
Higher editing
“Higher Editing” he called it, and I’ll get to the specifics of his technique in a few moments.
My first thriller, Lair of the Fox, was sold on the basis of an outline and the first 100 pages to a small publisher (Walker & Co). The completed manuscript weighed in at 120,000 words – every one them perfect, I’ll have you know.
But my editor informed me that, in order to reduce their printing and binding costs, Walker never published trade books over 80,000 words. Would I mind cutting 40,000 words from my manuscript? I did it — with the help of Kipling’s “Higher Editing” method. And the book is much the better for it.
DIGEST YOUR WORDS
A famous American editor had this advice: “Play ‘digester’ to your manuscript; imagine that you are an editorial assistant on a digest magazine performing a first squeeze on the article to be digested. Can you squeeze out an unnecessary hundred words from each thousand in your draft?”
Mystery writer John D. MacDonald used the reductive process as an intrinsic part of his creative plan. A magazine profile once described him “tapping out the 1,000-page drafts that he whittles down to 300-page manuscripts in four months.”
For this reductive process to work, however, you have to put your heart and soul into that first draft, like Tom Wolfe or John MacDonald. Don’t edit or second-guess yourself the first time through; let yourself be driven forward by the compelling emotion of your story; to switch metaphors, trowel on the raw pigment, which you can shape later at leisure.
To quote editor Gorham Munson, “Write as a writer, rewrite as a reader.”
THE LEONARD METHOD
Elmore Leonard went from a journeyman paperback writer (westerns and detectives) to best-sellerdom and Hollywood fame by taking an opposite tack. He began to edit himself in advance – on his first draft. As he famously put it (his rule No. 10 of good writing): “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”
If you can do that, bravo! Most writers have to go back over their work and painfully cut out the deadwood.
Here is the method used by Belgian mystery master Georges Simenon:
INTERVIEWER: “What do you cut out, certain kinds of words?”
SIMENON: “Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect. Every sentence which is there just for the sentence. You know, you have a beautiful sentence — cut it. Every time I find such a thing in one of my novels it is to be cut.”
To quote Leonard again, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
HIGHER EDITING
So we come, at last, to Kipling’s “Higher Editing.” Here he describes how he used it on his debut story collection, Plain Tales From the Hills:
“This leads me to the Higher Editing. Take of well-ground Indian Ink as much as suffices and a camel-hair brush proportionate to the interspaces of your lines. In an auspicious hour, read your final draft and consider
faithfully every paragraph, sentence and word, blacking out where requisite. Let it lie by to drain as long as possible.
“At the end of that time, re-read and you should find that it will bear a second shortening. Finally, read it aloud alone and at leisure. Maybe a shade more brushwork will then indicate or impose itself. If not, praise Allah and let it go, and ‘when thou hast done, repent not’…. The magic lies in the Brush and the Ink.”
—————-
Dan Pollock is the author of four thriller novels: Lair of the Fox, Duel of Assassins, Orinoco,and a specially commissioned “logistics” thriller, Precipice. He and his wife, Connie, a writer-editor, live in Southern California with their two children. You’ll find his blog at: http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=O8uEK&m=IhM0eF8OM_LsQz&b=kuZLqdii5DpvdVIbrBuqlw
[Editor’s note: This entry comes courtesy of Bruce Hale. Bruce has written and illustrated over 25 books for kids. His Underwhere series includes Prince of Underwhere and Pirates of Underwhere. His Chet Gecko Mysteries series includes: The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse, The Big Nap, The Malted Falcon, Hiss Me Deadly, and others. More at http://www.brucehale.com/]
Filed under Writing Tip Wednesday
