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Friday, July 29, 2016

GROWING AS A WRITER

Since Man first looked up at the stars, he wondered at the moon looking back down on him.

We yearned to fly up there somehow to see for ourselves what lay upon those distant shores ... 

and one day, we finally got there ... 

because we did not give up.

We yearn to make an impact with our writing, our casting of sparkling tales into the darkness.  

If we do not give up, we will reach that goal ... 

but only if we continue to grow.


HOW DO WE GROW AS WRITERS?


1.)  READ WRITERS WHO INSPIRE YOU

Here are some of which you may be unaware -- 


BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott:

Anne is the Bette Midler of the writing world -- and no, this book is not about birds.

 “Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram--it's the eagle on your credit card that only seems to soar.” 


CARING FOR WORDS IN A CULTURE OF LIES by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Marilyn is the standard bearer for the power of words.

 “Loving language means cherishing it for its beauty, precision, power to enhance understanding, power to name, power to heal. And it means using words as instruments of love”


THE SITUATION AND THE STORY by Vivian Gornik

Vivian weaves the magic of how the internal story gives birth to the external one.

"Every work of literature has both a situation and a story.  

The situation is the context of circumstance, sometimes the plot;  

the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer:  the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say." 


THE WRITING LIFE by Annie Dillard

In fluid and dream-like prose, Annie relates the harsh world of writing.

 “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. 

 One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all ... 

The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later."

What are some of your favorite inspiring books?


2.) SHAKE IT UP

Like those Go-Go Dancers of the sixties, shake it up.  Only first person for you?  Do third person.  Only prose.  Write a haiku.


3.) DANCE AS IF NO ONE WERE WATCHING

Forget about selling your book, about your audience, about what is hot. Write the best story you know how.  

Tarantino says that you should make your story for you.  There are others like you that will like it, too.


4.) WRITE FOR AN AUDIENCE

Yes, I know what I just said.  

But we are story-tellers.  We do our best work thinking of how best to stir the listeners.

Imagine you are telling your tale to a very sick friend, trying to get her mind off her pain.

 Can't be boring.  Can't be pedantic.  

Must conjure a world that takes your friend from the sickbed of pain to a world of wonder.


5.) WEED OUT WORD CRUTCHES

We all have words we fall back on over and over.  Work at expanding your vocabulary.

Wordle helps there:
http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. 

The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.  

It will help you see your crutch words while giving you a fun time.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

OUT NOW!


Forget about the end of October ...

Halloween this year comes at the end of July!

"The mind of Roland Yeomans is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror 

that stretches from the deadly forest at the edge of a Southwest border town to the coldest reaches of outer space. 

Yet all his work is united by one common thread:

A vivid and profound understanding of the vast sea of emotions that brings strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. 

Roland Yeomans' characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen. 

A horrified Nazi may find gruesome, poetic justice aboard a haunted Orient Express.

 A New Year's Eve party may find the invited guests of the just deceased Thomas Edison targets of revenge from beyond the grave. 

A Lakota teen may seek to repay cruelties only to find that revenge never goes as planned. 

An old rabbi may find himself in a parallel New Orleans facing demons invading our world. 

A cursed Texas Ranger finds redemption on All Hallow's Eve in a haunted French Quarter mansion. 

Each of these magnificent creations has something to tell us about our own humanity--

and all of their fates await you in this new volume of six classic short stories." 
- Sandra Thrasher

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

HAVE QUOTE WILL TRAVEL

(This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States
 between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.)

Have Gun -- Will Travel was one of the few television shows to spawn a successful radio version.  

Did you know that?

I remember watching the re-runs on TV in the late nights when just a boy. 


Each episode opened with the same visual:

Paladin drawing his gun  

while delivering a line of dialogue from the coming episode, 

after which the pistol is uncocked and holstered briskly. 


Some have seen a bit of Paladin in my Samuel McCord, 

though both are quite different, they both wear black and are educated.

 Those of you who have read my books know that I like to start each chapter 

with a tantalizing title and a quote to tease what is to come.

Take two chapters from my latest WIP:
THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS AT LARGE


CHAPTER TEN

TREACHERY IS LIKE DIAMONDS



“Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.”

– Qing Long, the Azure Dragon



CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A GRAVE OF DEAD GODS



“Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What of Huitzilopochtli?
 In one year - and it is no more than five hundred years ago - 50,000 youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. 
Today, he is not revered at all.  Such a waste of life, but that is the way of humans to waste the precious to serve the useless.”

 - Lady Meilori Shinseen


What do you think?  

Do beginning chapter quotes add to the book?  You know what I think by my use of them.

Starting a chapter with a quote is known as an Epigraph

 See?  Don't you feel more informed now?