A while ago I wrote lyrics for a friend of mine who’s a singer-songwriter and I’m back at it. The timing is right because I’ve become interested in the most rudimentary element of poetry and lyrics: rhyming schemes. I’ve been spending way too much time playing with language and experimenting with rhyming patterns and how they shape–and are shaped by–theme and...
I’ve recently paid attention to the sonnet form of poetry, and even wrote a modest entry of my own. Now I’ve been studying the villanelle. Like a sonnet, a villanelle follows a defined structural form, and therein lies my interest, which is why I’ve been drawn to Pecha Kucha. As a novelist, I have a lot of creative license with form: you can do anything you want, as long as you keep the reader...
I had the honor and pleasure last night of being one of eight presenters at Pecha Kucha night hosted by the Opalka Gallery at Sage College. Pecha Kucha is a unique and fascinating presentation format. Every presenter works within the same structure. You get 20 slides, each slide stays on screen for 20 seconds and then automatically advances to the next. You get exactly 6:40 to present (20 slides...
The love triangle is a classic narrative device in literature and film. It has been used throughout storytelling history, serving as the structural foundation for prize-winning literature, genre novels, classic films, and B-movies. The love triangle comes pre-baked with powerful story elements such as complex human emotions, moral dilemmas, and social dynamics. Inevitably, there’s one character...
In Ernest Hemingway’s first published novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” there’s a brief exchange of dialog between two minor characters when one asks the other how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” That quote resonated with me because it’s the way I stopped writing: gradually and then suddenly. I haven’t written a blog post in over a month. I used to write ten or...
It doesn’t happen nearly often enough, in fact hardly ever, but it happened twice in one week, and I admit I feel damn good about it. First, I got a letter (actual handwriting, ink on paper, delivered to my mailbox) from a reader who said great things about my novel In Flight. “The mystery of what happened when Robert was in the fugue state made it a real page turner . . . I’d be reading along...
Readers bring their own expectations and perceptions to a reading experience, and may interpret or connect with a novel in ways an author had never considered. Maybe they see a character trait or motivation that the author didn’t consciously write. Or they find a different meaning in a crucial plot point than the author intended. I’m fascinated when this happens because it reinforces the dynamic...
You might have started out with enthusiasm and a vision. With a spark of an idea, a single word, a sentence that intrigued you, an unusual character trait—and you’re off and running. And then at some point you realize you’re running in the dark, taking a wrong turn, smacking into a wall. It happens to every writer, whether you’re working on song lyrics, composing a poem, or writing a short story...
Last weekend at the Albany Book Festival my table was next to the Adirondack Center for Writing table. It’s an organization that’s building a community of writers and readers in the Adirondacks region, offering classes, workshops, events, and more for writers of all ages. They had one of those old-fashioned gumball machines at their table, this one offering (for a free turn of the handle)...
I’m tabling at the Albany Book Festival when a woman walks by my display and picks up a copy of In Flight. She immediately flips the book to glance at the back cover copy. Two seconds later she puts the book down. She says in a tone that can only be heard as snarky, “Why would I want to read about a man’s midlife crisis?” “It doesn’t say midlife crisis,” I tell her. “It says midlife transitions.”...
I have a writer friend, Wendy, who has been suffering from the worst kind of writerly affliction: the dreaded writer’s block. She tells me she’s stuck in the quagmire, sinking slowly, grasping at air. Writer’s block is a daunting creative challenge. You can’t find an idea anywhere. You can’t make any progress on your work-in-progress. You have a physical aversion to sitting down at your...
This one is for my writing students. But aren’t we all students of writing? Don’t we all want to write well so that we can communicate clearly and be understood—whether we’re dashing off a text, composing an important email, or pouring our hearts out in a love letter? Writers often do a lot of research to help inform their work, but you can’t just dump a bunch of expository material into your...
A couple of years ago, a writer friend told me that soon artificial intelligence will be writing better fiction than we can. I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but I didn’t forget his words. On the bright side, it prompted me to write two new novels: The Culling and In Flight. Perhaps I was trying to get something accomplished before I became obsolete. That day might be approaching. Generative AI...
It has to be a coincidence. Randomness on display. One world is fiction and the other is real. But something just happened to me that is eerily reminiscent of what happened to the character Robert Besch in my novel In Flight. In the book, after the news spreads that the Plane-Crash Hero had suffered from a dissociative fugue, all kinds of strangers begin contacting Robert. From the novel: There...
I visited with a book group that read In Flight. It’s been a while since I’ve spoken with a book group and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy the experience (hey, readers talking about my novels—what’s not to enjoy). But I’d forgotten about the first question many readers ask: “How did you get the idea?” No matter how many times I’m asked that question, and no matter which of my novels is being...
