|
|
By Thomas Sullivan, on May 15th, 2011
You don’t have to read too many of my columns to know that I am an advocate of first-hand inspiration as opposed to letting one’s imagination do all the work. No matter how good you are, standing pat on your knowledge and memory as you create whole worlds is a sure way to cheat your [...]
By Thomas Sullivan, on February 16th, 2011
Having spent most my life outside the box, I love being lost. All right, go ahead, nod your head and smile sadly. But I mean physically lost. Like in a snowstorm in the woods. To be lost is to shed all shackles, to erase the façades of society for a time and – if there [...]
By Thomas Sullivan, on January 15th, 2011
Janus, the Roman god of gates and doorways, has kicked off another January. True, he is two-faced, looking forward and backward at the same time (you can’t sneak up on him!), but I like that. It sort of shows the circularity of things.
By [...]
By Thomas Sullivan, on December 15th, 2010
Picture a carrara marble room whose fire pit blazes silver in its reflection on a curved glass wall which overlooks the Grand Canyon by day and tilts upward to magnify the universe at night. The jaws of the black granite Sphinx in the center of the room open in a kind of Savonarola throne made [...]
By Thomas Sullivan, on June 16th, 2010
Used to be that my muse had to put a bullet in my brain to get my attention. Now I can hear the gun cock. Hell, sometimes I hear the barrel clearing leather. All by way of saying that recognizing where stories come from is an acquired skill.
Yes, you can take the shortcut just by [...]
By Thomas Sullivan, on April 16th, 2010
Yoo hoo! Attention everyone who has been broomed out of a job by Donald Trump. And you uncounted millions over and above the counted millions who all are out of work — gotta minute? Also to the rejected, the downtrodden, day dreamers, spurned lovers, adventurers, searchers, fantasizers, philosophers, natural-born psychologists, sob sister, questers, trapped housewives, [...]
By Thomas Sullivan, on March 16th, 2010
It’s happening again. I am suffering from postpartum depression in the wake of an Olympics. Call this one Vancouver games detox or 50K skinny ski hangover. It is very similar to what I feel after penning the last word to a novel (been there, done that, as they like to say on Death Row). In [...]
By Thomas Sullivan, on March 15th, 2010
It’s happening again. I am suffering from postpartum depression in the wake of an Olympics. Call this one Vancouver games detox or 50K skinny ski hangover. It is very similar to what I feel after penning the last word to a novel (been there, done that, as they like to say on Death Row). In [...]
By Thomas Sullivan, on February 16th, 2010
I don’t know if I can do this. I want to, but I don’t know if I can. I want to tell you about characters, about heroes & villains and the necessity of empathizing with them, but I think it’s a lot like telling you to go through psychoanalysis.
That’s because you have to be bigger [...]
By Thomas Sullivan, on January 15th, 2010
Who you were at your best moment is always who you can be again. Kind of like summiting a mountain, it becomes a benchmark. You’ve proven you can reach that far, be that person, do that thing – a minimum standard of excellence that cannot be taken away from you. That applies pretty much to [...]
|
|