Author: admin
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Run, stupid, run
The other night, as we were watching the latest incarnation of The Incredible Hulk, my daughter turned to me to during two major fight scenes and said, “Why don’t they just step out of the way?”
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Slaying the Gatekeepers
Nine months is reasonable to wait for a baby. Nine months is reasonable to write a novel. However, nine months is not so reasonable to hear absolutely no response from a traditional publisher or agent on a work submitted for consideration.
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Black River – Prologue
Craxius heard words in the river. At first, he thought it was the other soldiers from the fortress laughing about the ambush. Then he was sure that it was the whispers of a band of Northerners sneaking up on the encampment of soldiers. Finally, he heard children singing. But it was only the water rushing…
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The sun adrift behind the hill
A poem I wrote for my daughter inspired by a morning waiting for the bus.
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Black River – Work in Progress
Sand lifted in a great gust forcing Shield Scyldmund to close his eyes. The fine particles blasted against his skin, sharp, at the edge of pain. It hissed as it slithered beneath the rings of his dented armor, twisted into his beard, and lodged itself into the wrinkles that masked his eyes. These fierce sands…
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First Lines
Another piece of advice coming out of the Book Passage writer’s conference was to look at the first lines of books to see how they both draw the reader in and already begin telling what the story is really like. Here are a few powerful first lines that I have recently come across. “From the…
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Who’s the Audience?
One of the often repeated rules of writing is: Know your audience. The idea behind this seemingly simple piece of advice is that as a writer you have to understand who it is you are writing for and what their expectations are and, that once you know your audience, it will be easier to write…
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Train Wreck!
This past weekend, Book Passage‘s annual Children’s Writers and Illustrators Conference was interrupted by a train wreck. But luckily by the end of the four days, I had pulled myself out of the mangled wreckage of twisted metal and burning compartments, dusted the ash from my sleeves, and put one shaky foot in front of…
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My Influences
Physical training traditions – whether martial or health oriented – are not learned from books, but rather through hands on physical contact and instruction by those who have walked the path ahead of you. In this way, a physical teaching is a direct connection to the earlier adepts in a method or tradition and is…
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In Pursuit of Things of No Value
“The only thing that has less value in our society than reading is writing.” Bret Anthony Johnson, Director of Creative Writing at Harvard University To the average person, Mr. Johnson’s comment during a recent talk about his new book at Book Passage may have seemed more like an indictment on his own book and craft…
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The Meaning of My Study of Physical Traditions
Physical training traditions, whether they are Bagua from China or yoga from India or somatic studies from the 20th century, are vehicles for the exploration and refinement for the body and the mind. These methods are maps, sometimes precise and sometimes vague, for the dedicated and persistent practitioner to delve deeper into fundamental questions of…
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Strategies to Improve Creativity
Last week, I attended a talk by creativity coach Eric Maisel at Book Passage to hear him discuss his new book The Van Gogh Blues. I have not gone to any book readings for a long time, not since college, where there had been a steady flow of world class poets like Seamus Heaney and…