The Middle of the Dark

I never do very good by making New Year’s resolutions, but as I get older, I have gotten more focused on setting specific goals.   I feel I accomplished a lot in 2011 - I went to NYC for the first time, I went to New Orleans (ok, let's forget that), I moved into a new house, I published my first novel - two of those are from a lifetime goal list, so 2011 wasn't too shabby.  My only real goal for 2012 is to make 2011 the rule, and not the exception.  That being said, I have a few small goals I will tend to in 2012: Publish my collection of short fiction (Winter 2012) Complete and publish my next novel (Fall 2012) Start work - and complete a first draft?- on the Elizabeth sequel (2013) Go back to NYC Make that return trip to Europe I have been planning for 10 years There's lots of other things I'd love to do, such as: Hold my breath until Community comes back on Stop caring so much about new Apple rumors Redirect frustration over the things I cannot chang...

182.  Have you forgot your reader? The writer-reader relationship may be one of the most complicated - and unforgiving - in the arts.  To give you an idea, do a Google search to see how many qutoes line up on the side of the reader being the most important aspect of writing, and then see how many quotes you can find for the exact opposite. The truth is, without readers, fiction is nothing.  Your reader must be your primary concern, but then at the same time, you have to have a certain ignorance of them.  As a writer you need to achieve a couple things in your novel or short story.  The first and probably most important is distance.  The reader can't be aware of the author as they're reading; if they are, the jig is up and what John Gardner calls 'a vivid and continuous dream' is shattered.  Every effect you create within your work has to work towards the goal of making you as the author invisible; you have to work in mysterious ways.  Th...

Continuing my series of posts based off of David Madden's essential Revising Fiction: 99. Have you failed to make dialog perform secondary functions? A lot of beginning writers see dialogue as a way of advancing the plot. Most of the plot will come out through it, and in lesser fiction, characters will contribute things they already know and/or would have no reason to share with someone else because the author needs to get this out for the reader. Dialogue can and should advance the plot - in a play it's often the only means - but dialogue can also convey other functions as well. Dialogue is a incredibly effective means of conveying character. Done correctly, a character may reveal any or all of the following through dialogue: Beliefs Biases Education Location History Most of this should come subtly. You don't want to have a character announce any of these things (typically). A highly educated person will sound different from someone without an education....

As promised, I'm kicking off a little run of posts dedicated to the topics from David Madden's essential Revising Fiction: A Handbook for Writers .  I'll touch on a few of these, and in no particular order, so here goes: 3. If you have used the first-person point of view, have you realized all its potentials? The novel in progress, otherwise known as #GhostofBigDamnEpic, features a first-person narrator.  This is pretty unusual for me.  Most of my work tends toward the third person, such as The Book of Elizabeth .   I chose to tell the new novel from the first person because of the opportunity the character presented me.  The main character lives in isolation, exiled from his memory and every other concept of life that we take for granted.  His voice is his only constant; it's repetitious, a trick against forgetting.  It had a music and an energy that made it compelling to pursue.  Where I rely on Madden is asking myself some key questi...

You've all heard the old addage - writing is rewriting. No one believes that more than me.  I probably over-revise.  I spend years on short stories.  'News Right Fresh From Heaven,' my story that appeared in Fantasy Magazine earlier this year, began almost four years before, as two different stories (one was good, one was bad).  I have a couple other stories right now that I have been working on in some way, shape or form for just as long.  It's funny now to be editing my story collection, which will appear very early next year, and to revisit these stories.  My intent with the editing was mainly cosmetic.  I ended up making some minor edits, mostly aimed at excessive commas and exclamation points (!!!), but also a few bigger changes to sentences and paragraphs.  I changed nothing structurally in the stories.  I don't want to re-write these, though the impulse sometimes occurs - what was I thinking there? - and so this is less a Director...

In no particular order: I'm usually too tired from work and writing fiction to blog. Most everyone says I need to blog to promote my fiction. I write fiction to promote. On the blog I'm too tired to update. Most people think since you're a writer, you always know what to say. Most people - sometimes - think you must be smart, because you're writer. You calculate the speed at which excitement collapses into disappointment on someone's face as the time it takes you to answer, "So what kinds of books do you write?" Time=the books you want to write The best books you will ever write are the ones you dream about right before you wake up. You listen to music for economy and melody.  You watch TV for rhythm and depth.  You listen to the way people talk on the bus for dialogue. You tell everyone else who wants to write to read.