Columns

Time is Arbitrary, But My Reading Goals are My Expression of Hope

January 4th, 2021

One of my coworkers likes to wish people a Happy New Year with the caveat/reminder that time is meaningless and circular and our celebrations of a new year (and subsequently, hopes for improvement come Jan. 1) are equally meaningless. Maybe — probably — he has a point. But that hasn't, and won't, stop me from setting my meaningless goals, declaring my intentions for the new year, hanging all my hopes on the idea of a better 2021.

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Writers Don't Need Social Media

December 30th, 2020

Social media. We hate it, but as writers, we have an excuse: “It’s part of the gig!” For us, it’s NECESSARY! All the hate, the stupid arguments, all the politics, all the getting angry at celebrities we don’t even really know for doing things we don’t understand...it’s all part of the game, right? Somehow, we’re all just trapped in this fucking dystopian nightmare where writing down stories also involves shit like Snapchat filters and TikTok stardom?

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Drinking From The Skulls of My Enemies: My New Year's Resolutions

December 29th, 2020

Original Photo by Godisable Jacob I probably pitch a resolutions piece every year. I like the idea that we used twelve months (or they used us) and now we get a new 12-pack. I believe we can use a "new" year to convince ourselves we have a new opportunity, even if the world is still burning and the pandemic isn't over.

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Science Versus Faith in Fiction

December 28th, 2020

Science is a tool writers use to make their characters trustworthy and their stories believable. Science fills in the gaps. Science ties our world to new, fictional worlds. Science is an overused tool in fiction. What Faith Is Here's the briefest version I could come up with to show the difference between the use of faith and science in fiction:

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Nothing New Under the Mistletoe - 40 Versions of "A Christmas Carol" You Should Check Out

December 23rd, 2020

When it comes to Christmas stories, there is nothing new under the mistletoe. Year after year after year, we are bombarded with tales of respect for humankind, family togetherness, redemption, and miraculous snowstorms that move in at 11:59:59 on Christmas Eve. (In fact, Hallmark Channel is airing 40 NEW Christmas movies this year!) It’s as much a part of 21st Century Christmas in the United States as online shopping and blow-up lawn Santas.

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Storyville: Body, Mind, and Soul—Adding Depth to Your Stories

December 22nd, 2020

If you’ve been following this column and my teachings, then you know I talk a lot about Freytag as a guiding force in my work. That’s one structure, one path forward, and it works for me. You know—the narrative hook, the inciting incident, exposition, increasing tension, internal and external conflict, leading to a climax, resolution (with change), and denouement.

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Using Bibliomancy as a Drafting Tool

December 21st, 2020

Bibliomancy is a traditional divinatory practice that can be found across all religions, and it uses passages from books or sacred texts as a way to predict and interpret future events and our relationship to moral and emotional predicaments. Historically it has an interesting past, because while the church was against fortune telling or augury due to its ties to witchcraft and heathenism in the middle ages, bibliomancy was allowed because it used the Bible, the Qur’an, the Torah, etc.

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Trello for Authors

December 18th, 2020

Trello is an online organizational tool for individuals, teams, and businesses. There is a free version and then a paid version with lots of bells and whistles. The free version has everything I need for now. There are a number of tutorial videos you can find on YouTube about general features and applications for team projects in a corporate setting. I’m going to focus on how I use Trello for myself as an author. Getting started is as easy as going to Trello.com and signing up. But how do you use it?

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On Using Personal History As Fiction

December 17th, 2020

Author photo via Wikipedia Some years ago - eleven to be exact - I was just coming out of a twelve month period of personal and legal hell... better known as a bad divorce. Now, the expression ‘a good divorce’ may be something of an oxymoron...

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That Time I Ran a Virtual Literary Festival (and Lived to Tell the Tale)

December 16th, 2020

The Festival Four years ago I helped launch (and subsequently run) The Charleston to Charleston Literary Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. It was the brainchild of two Charlestons on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Charleston in Sussex, England, was the country home of Bloomsbury painters Vanessa Bell (sister to Virginia Woolf) and Duncan Grant, and is home of one of England's premiere literary Festivals.

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