I'm always fascinated by the way writing projects change with time. For me, only short stories usually turn out as originally perceived. Novels change radically over the course of writing. Entire story lines and characters are dropped; in some … [Continue reading]
There are just a few more hours left in this three-day weekend. Tomorrow, it's back to work and dropped into the madness of a major software release. Earlier today, I wrote about how writing is work. Not the hardest work I'll ever do, but it … [Continue reading]
This Brain Pickings piece from April seems fitting for Labor Day in the states. In it, Cheryl Strayed says of writing: Writing is hard for every last one of us… Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how … [Continue reading]
Have you ever given much thought to the voice you hear inside your head when reading to yourself? When I read to myself, I don't totally hear my own voice in my head -- just an approximation. I hear the voice I've always heard in my head; I … [Continue reading]
It's quiet out there right now. It's been quiet for hours and there are still hours of quiet to come before light breaks and the day begins. That's what happens when you wake up at 2:30 in the morning and think, "I can go back to sleep for a … [Continue reading]
Day job work has been busy this summer, so I set aside the second draft of the current novel and tinkered with the last novel I finished. I never gave it a fair run with submission, so a little tightening was in order before putting it back out … [Continue reading]
As a kid, making sure my feet were covered with my blanket made me feel safe from monsters that lurked at the foot of the bed. Making sure the blankets were pulled up around my neck ensured nothing would open a jugular vein and drain me as I slept. … [Continue reading]
I started The Juggling Writer almost six years ago. There have been times I've written an entry a day for a complete month. Other times, especially in the last year or so, updates are not as frequent -- sometimes not even a single entry in a … [Continue reading]
A good friend has dubbed it "The September Silence" -- that time each year that I take a social media break in order to pretend the weather is cooler in Texas and turn my focus even more toward writing. At 11:57 p.m. on August 31, I logged out of all … [Continue reading]
When Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" was taught to me, it was as though only the last three lines existed: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Out of context, it … [Continue reading]
A couple weeks ago, I read an article on The Nation website called The Democracy of Difficult Fiction that I'm still rolling around in my head. I write about reading a fair amount because it's through reading that I learned the most about … [Continue reading]
I've written about shutting out distractions before. It's a bit of an obsession with me -- especially in a time when we have more things than ever that can be distracting. These things aren't always bad, even though many make them out to be. … [Continue reading]
I'm a big fan of slow writing. I love that recent Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See) was a book that took 10 years to write. A previous winner, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, took a decade as well. (Right … [Continue reading]