I can’t let myself overthink it. I can’t worry about whether the prose is any good, at least until I finish my draft. It’s always the same. The beginning coalesces, hardens into concrete, while the middle is mush and the end none existent. The worst that can happen is I don’t finish it. I have to keep reminding myself to stop worrying about the quality of the prose and just get it down. All of it.
I’m sitting at my writing desk with my coffee and a couple of “Coppengrath Gewürz Spekulatins” spiced biscuits (cookies) from a package my German mother-in-law gave to my kid. Yes, I am eating his cookies. There are plenty in the bag. He doesn’t need all those cookies. He won’t miss a few.
My latest short story, “Robot Mommy,” is now appearing in Issue 972 of BewilderingStories.com.
How Often Should I Blog? Consistently. Here’s a better question: if I want to be a novelist and not a blogger, should I bother at all?
I woke up this morning to discover that Joe Rogan apologized for yet another podcast that triggered another round of social media outrage…
I come up with a lot of excuses for not writing, which is inexcusable. My latest excuse: my 16-yr old kid came down with COVID.
Okay, not literally. The interval between seconds didn’t actually lengthen. Time didn’t tick by slower than usual. People around me didn’t speak with a drawl or move in slow motion. There were no redshifts or time dilation effects that I noticed. It wasn’t as if I was launched into space at near light speed and returned to Earth to find my husband an old man, hunched over, grasping a walking cane, and my boys with gray hair and grandchildren. Nothing like that.
I’m thrilled my latest short story “Invasion of the Alien Parasite from Interdimensional Space” is now appearing in issue 925 of BewilderingStories.com.
My short story “The Girl with No Eyes” has been published by Altered Reality Magazine. I’m so thankful my story found a home.
According to James Scott Bell in his book, Write Your Novel From The Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between, every successful story contains what he calls a “magical midpoint moment” or “look in the mirror moment” where a single moment in the middle of the story pulls together the entire narrative… I had previously associated this “mirror moment” with fiction, and only fiction–one of the many secret ingredients in a well-crafted story that engages an audience. Now I realize it also applies to me.
