I have a writing hat. As a writer, I have a routine, much like athletes have routines to put on their game face. For me, it involves putting on a beaten-up baseball cap. It’s a white baseball cap. Says “Richmond Baseball” on it. It has a blue bill. The only significance to it is thatContinue reading “On My Writing Routine”
Tag Archives: Writing
On Committing Fiction
I’ve committed fiction. Okay, it’s just a start. It’s hardly complete, and there’s a long way — maybe seventy, eighty thousand words — left to go. Around Easter, an idea struck me. I saw the beginning. I saw the ending. It was the part in the middle that was fuzzy. The part in the middleContinue reading “On Committing Fiction”
On Random Saturday Things
I like post offices with gift shops. The Elderburg post office has a nice gift shop. They had all sorts of collectible things. I bought a postcard set. And Edgar Allan Poe stamps. I bought a picture frame. My mother gave me a photograph of my grandfather; it’s from the early 1940’s, and he’s inContinue reading “On Random Saturday Things”
On Existential Angst
Bear with me. I’m suffering some existential angst. A friend e-mailed me on Friday afternoon. I’d written her about some recent doings in my life, and in her reply she asked a basic question. “Why are you writing science-fiction?” She didn’t put it quite like that. But that was the point she danced around. TheContinue reading “On Existential Angst”
On Missing Lids
The lid to the peanut butter jar is missing. At 10:15 this morning, while fixing a cup of coffee, I saw on the kitchen counter the jar of peanut butter. Lidless. It is a new jar, I opened it yesterday when fixing peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches for lunch. A survey of the kitchen counter revealed noContinue reading “On Missing Lids”
On Random Thoughts, Late Friday Afternoon
At a meeting today… “We’re not writing Hemingway here.” No, I try and write like Fitzgerald, thanks. Last night, while listening to the BBC World Service on NPR, I heard something I’d never, ever heard before. I heard someone pronounce “February” the way it’s spelled. I’ve always heard people say “Fe Byoo Airy.” Sometimes, justContinue reading “On Random Thoughts, Late Friday Afternoon”
On Word-Coinage
At work today it was decided — I had coined a new word. A good word. A perfect word. Clusterfuckery. I don’t claim the word. I see, from a quick Google search, that “clusterfuckery” has been in circulation for a few years now. It’s not my neologism. 🙂 Yet, I’m still going to use it.Continue reading “On Word-Coinage”
On Saturday’s Plans
Last night, after work, we held a wake. Layoffs had come to the company on Thursday, and my department lost two — a writer and a graphics artist. Usually, when there’s a departure, the department goes to lunch on the last day at a local restaurant. That, sadly, wasn’t an option this time, so theContinue reading “On Saturday’s Plans”
On Sequel Thinking
For absolutely no reason at all today — except maybe that the subway train broke down in the tunnel between stops this morning — I worked out in my mind a sequel to a movie that maybe doesn’t need a sequel: Dave. Dave, of course, is that charming Kevin Kline movie about a Presidential impersonator,Continue reading “On Sequel Thinking”
On Unwritten Scenes
I’ve had The Lord of the Rings on the brain of late, the proximate cause being the repeated e-mails I’ve received from GameStop telling me to come into a local store to pre-order Lord of the Rings: Conquest, which came out on Wednesday. And then, of course, there was my discovery that a new TolkienContinue reading “On Unwritten Scenes”