Tag: writing life
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Ignoring the Inner Critic
While the Critic Sleeps I like to write in the morning. The earlier the better. It’s not just because the world is quiet then. My thoughts are as well, mainly because the critical part of my brain–the part skilled at finding fault–is still sleeping. As a result, if I start early enough, I might get…
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Putting Together A Short Fiction Collection
You’ve been writing stories. Some have appeared in magazines and anthologies. A few are still making the rounds. And a few more—possibly the best of the lot—don’t seem to be a good fit for the current markets. But one thing’s for sure. You’ve got enough for a collection. So what do you do? Next week,…
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Writing & Resilience
Later this morning, I’m leaving for Milford, the town where Damon Knight, James Blish, and Virginia Kidd helped establish science fiction as a respected literary genre and where The Virginia Kidd Literary Agency still operates out of Kidd’s former residence. Blish and Kidd dubbed their residence Arrowhead, and during the 1960s it served as a…
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Writing in Private
“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.” So said Ernest Hemingway when accepting the Nobel Prize in 1954. And yet, a few decades earlier (according to his recollections in A Moveable Feast) he wrote many of his short stories in public—surrounded by (and occasionally taking inspiration from) the strangers who came and went as…
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Overcoming Writer’s Block:
Bono, R.E.M. & The Doorway EffectSome of the best advice for overcoming writer’s block comes from U2’s Bono by way of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. At least, I think that’s the case … though try as I might, I can’t locate any record of the interview. Nor do I recall anything else said in the interview or even if I came…