It’s Sunday again. My non-writing day. So here I am. Not writing.

I’ve already talked about working on description (sunset exercise) and stealing dialog (from strangers), Read the rest of this entry »

So, here I am, blogging from my this crazy little rectangle of fried (and highly arranged) sand. Extremely cool, even if it does leave me without blogging excuse when traveling. More importantly, it gives me a terrific excuse for typoes. Don’t judge me, I’m typing with my thumbs on somerhj g the size of a chicklet.

Am I a hypocrite? I still think the kindle is (mostly) evil.

Two things before I really begin . . .

1. I am currently nosed completely under (like a mole, not a ship) working on a new book. This is why I haven’t been blogging (see, perfectly good excuse). But as I don’t work on Sundays, that excuse doesn’t apply right now. Thus, I blog.

2. I hope no one expects me to suggest amazingly original works in this new blog category of mine. Or particularly helpful recommendations. I can only be autobiographical. I can’t say that everything I mention here will be whole grain, wholesome boy-food. The meals I will recount here are meals that sated my appetite, filled me up, and/or left me curious to try new things. Some titles that I intend to trot out will be the literary equivalent of sliced dogs in mac ‘n’ cheese (and that’s no insult in my world).

Right. Down to it then. When I was in 5th grade, Read the rest of this entry »

In the comments section on a previous post, I promised a dialog exercise. Look at me now. Apparently, I keep a promise.

One of the easiest ways a story can fall apart (or never come together), is in the humanity of the characters. A story could be terrific conceptually, well plotted, outlined and re-outlined, read (and loved) by aunts and mothers and siblings and former 6th  grade teachers, and still be populated by characters who limp around like zombies patched together from old classmates (with the emotional depth of sock puppets). Read the rest of this entry »

Back in my early/ier years, I read me a fair bit of Howard Pyle. I liked him. He knew how to make his historical fiction resonate (with me), and when he spun fantasy, he was always able to create scenes that absolutely demanded N.C. Wyeth illustrations. He did his own illustrations, and I liked them, but Wyeth would have been better. Which is no knock to Pyle. He was (after all) directly responsible for training Wyeth’s narrative and illustrative sensibilities, so it makes sense that the boyhood me always wanted to see Wyeth incarnate Pyle’s words.

But I’ve wandered. Back to the point. I liked Pyle. He was a friend. So when Random House asked me to write the introduction for Pyle’s collection of short fantasies Read the rest of this entry »

As is the case with most things that I say, this is stolen. But this isn’t stolen from another writer, this is stolen (and adapted) from a music video/film guy friend.

If you want to be a writer (professionally and not just as a hobbyist), here’s a litmus test for your dedication. Can you get up early and write a short creative sketch of the sunrise (oh, say, 250 wds)? Then can you do it again tomorrow? And the next day? Can you write 30 descriptive sketches of 30 consecutive sunrises? The simple exercise in discipline is hard enough, and it will tell you just how much you actually want to write. But on top of that, the writing component is quite difficult as well. How do you see the sunrise in a new way every morning? How do you express it in a new way? Can you get through the verbal cliche-flailing, and actually create 30 distinct scenes?

Adapt the exercise if you want. Stand in the same place every night and try to sketch 30 consecutive midnights. I have one student doing daily sketches of the same glass of wine. If you do try to do this (no matter how good you might already be), you will learn a lot about yourself as a writer, and you’ll have to move in new ways through the English language. Get off the worn footpaths of description. Kick through walls. Climb fences. Trespass.

So (as it turns out), the L.A. Times puts on a mean not-so-little Festival of Books. The sun was shining, the palm trees were lovely and stereotypically sun-rustled, the UCLA campus was slammed with tens of thousands of bookish types, and the Target Children’s area was doing its best impression of an ant-farm. This was my first time participating, and I could have easily spent both days browsing and buying instead of what I actually did (work on my laptop and eat peanut M&Ms backstage).

A few remarks for the sake remarking . . . Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to the good people at Target and Random House, I will be hitting the L.A. Times Books Festival next weekend. My job is to be smiling and shiny on the Target Children’s Stage at 4.40pm on Saturday the 25th. In L.A. (if you missed that part). If you too will be around the Fest, stop on by and give me a beauty queen wave.

A little more info here. Cheers.

Occasionally, in conversations with some Worthy Aspirer, I will be asked about the mechanics of description. Specifically, how does one make something vivid? Being easily distracted, it is not hard for me to quickly frog my way into bigger discussions about the nature of metaphor or vicarious experience or even the nature of knowledge itself. Not that I really know anything about these things, but how hard is it to speculate and wonder aloud? I do think such meta-topics are important, but kicking them around isn’t always immediately and practically helpful to someone trying to describe a country road or a lonely dog.

So here is today’s (or perhaps, tomonth’s) hot tip Read the rest of this entry »

So, I owe public thanks to the good folks of Olney, IL (home of the white squirrels). They participate in the One Community, One Book program, and this year they picked Leepike Ridge to be their community title. They foisted free copies on folks out of their local businesses and even went so far as to set up a life-size diorama of Tom and Argus (and corpse) in the front of their Super Wal-Mart. Of course, too many people did find the corpse disturbing, so it moved into schools.

They also brought me in for a day’s worth of events, and the kids kept me hopping throughout–catching biographical errors in paperbacks, prying their way backstage into the creative process, and helpfully suggesting future books, characters, concepts, etc.

And yes, I saw white squirrels in their natural Olney habitat. Two of them.

Thanks to all the people who made it such a great program (and especially to Pat Carlson for all the dirty work). Much gratitude. Cheers.