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This is for the ones who despair. This is for the ones gripped by the feeling that it will never get better. That they will never get better. I promise you this much: It can. And you might. That’s the best guarantee you’re going to get. Can and might. There’s only one certain guarantee, and that’s [...] [What do you get when you cross a Storytellers Unplugged deadline with an exhausted writer who’s just finished a near-30,000-word novella that ran several thousand words more than expected? Today we get a redux: the very first column I did here, in June 2006, and which I recently tapped as supplemental material for a multipart [...] We all have certain foibles whose antidotes we can’t be reminded of too often. One of mine is perfectionism. I can’t really say when it started, but for years I’ve wrestled with periods of self-imposed expectations so acute that they verge on paralyzing. Putting something down becomes excruciatingly difficult, because, well, what if it doesn’t measure [...] “Begin with the end in mind…” Sound advice, that. Sound strategy. The rationale being that if you don’t know where you’re going, how in the name of Zeus can you be sure you’ll actually get there? Where, exactly? The end of an as-yet-unfinished novel comes to mind, for starters, but that’s just one entry on a [...] "I meant to do that." There are a lot of places where I and everything else in sight don’t make for a comfortable fit. Where the drummer has one rhythm going and my feet twitch to some other cadence entirely. Most people will eventually cop to the same. Once we drop our pretenses, we’re all [...] Gomez has a simple job in life, but he gives it his all. What do you get when you mix our hottest August on record, a proclivity toward summer lethargy (for which, come to find out, the Japanese have a name: natsubate), and weed allergy season? For starters, me behind on just about everything. Hence [...] Kevin Bacon playing "6 Degrees Of Moral Repugnance" It happens to all of us: A work is rejected or critically thrashed on the grounds that the main character isn’t sympathetic enough. Maybe the entire disagreeable herd of them aren’t sympathetic enough. Of course it’s a highly subjective complaint, and maybe even misses the mark for what [...] At almost every level, except maybe the upper echelons of bestsellerdom, writers seeking to establish professional relationships face a signal-to-noise ratio so lopsided it’s like pitting a mouse against an elephant. Guess which critter the writer is. The only way to cut through the noise and make yourself stand out is to do awesome work. And once [...] Now you just stand there and think about what you’ve done. [I'm not keen on the idea of reruns, but better that than giving the day a miss. Today, the past couple of weeks have led up to this question: to euthanize or not. I hope you understand. Here's one from 13 months ago that [...] Unless you put your work away where nobody else can see it, writing is an act of risk. People might not get it. People might not get you. The work may not fit present needs. And that’s just the submission part. Publication magnifies all that exponentially … and worse, does so in public. If [...] |
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