A writing experiment March 31, 2009

I’ve begun a writing experiment, though I don’t know why. I’ve started working on a short story that will be written exclusively on Google Documents. I noted in an earlier post that I had looked at Google Documents as an offsite storage device for my writing, the need of this springing from my hard drive [...]

Chapter 15 is underway March 28, 2009

I’ve finally made a good start into Chapter Fifteen of The Sleep of Reason, having more than 1400 words in place. This chapter had a troubled beginning. I was thrown off balance when I had thought that I had lost the last thousand words of the previous chapter. Would I need to rewrite those — [...]

Intentional fallacy March 26, 2009

A common post I see on many writers’ blogs is about getting bad reviews for their work. To their credit, these posters nearly always take their licks and acknowledge that sometimes bad reviews happen. But at some point they usually come around to noting that the critic “just didn’t get it” about the meaning of [...]

I was mistaken (and glad of it) March 24, 2009

I boasted last week about how I have a new Time Capsule router and backup drive that will prevent a repeat of the lost-chapters mishap of last summer when my hard drive crashed. The Time Capsule saves all of my work automatically to a separate location (though I am still doing more manual backups too).
Later [...]

Night Train to Lisbon March 23, 2009

Can there be anything more absurd than this:
to be moved by a wish that has no conceivable object?
Amadeu de Prado
The Goldsmith of Words
I confess to picking up this novel because its title is similar to a short story of mine. I’ve certainly read books for less reason than that, but I’m glad of this bit [...]

“Night Train to Kisumu” March 21, 2009

Allow me to crow a little bit. My short story “Night Train to Kisumu” is up over at Wanderings Magazine. You can go straight to the story here.
I mentioned in an earlier post that this was based on an actual train trip I took in Kenya several years ago. The characters are changed a little [...]

Reading books to children March 20, 2009

When my children were little we would read to them all the time. Mostly I think they liked to snuggle next to us and be given a lot of loving attention, but they did have favorite books that they liked to hear over and over. Later, there were movies they wanted to see again and [...]

Time Capsule March 18, 2009

I recently installed an Apple Time Capsule as the router for the wireless system in my home. I’d been wanting to do something like this since last summer when I had that much lamented hard drive crash and lost so much data, including two chapters of The Sleep of Reason.
The router we had was a [...]

Chapter 14 is finished March 14, 2009

And there is much rejoicing. This chapter of The Sleep of Reason has taken an unreasonably long time to complete. At least it seems that way. According to my notes, I started it exactly a month ago, and I guess that’s not so long for one whole chapter of a novel. The word count comes [...]

Let’s do this again! March 11, 2009

Absolutely “effervescent” with the recent placement of one of my short stories, I thought I’d try sending out another oldie but goodie that’s been languishing in my story subdirectory for too long.
It’s a short, short story — only about 1600 words — and it is pretty much in the middle of the middle of the [...]