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2012-01-29T12:22:00.007-05:00

DIY Procrastination Techniques for Writers

We all do it. We sit down at the desk, turn on the computer, stare at the cursor (It should be spelled CURSE-or, actually …) and then start fiddling with things around the desk: pencils, paper clips, staplers, etc. Then we usually get up and go to the fridge because all that sitting and staring produces hunger enzymes.

So if we are going to procrastinate, let’s do it right:

• If you REALLY want to waste time, log on to Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus. I know you think it helps get work done, but no. It doesn’t.

• For added exercise, stock your fridge with expensive ice creams, for those days when nothing’s going on via the blank page. This will not help with your work, but ice cream is always a good thing, and a couple of jogs to the kitchen every ten minutes won't kill you.

• Write near a window. This way you can crane your neck to see the attractive neighbor, watch people cross the street, or check the weather every few minutes.

• The radio: blasting AC/DC or NPR will probably only fry your nerves, but it’s a good distraction from that shitty scene you are writing.

• Keep your cell phone close. You never know when someone annoying may call about something stupid and throw you off your rhythm completely. Having chats with best friends about everything and nothing is often very useful in this regard; or even random calls to people you barely have time for on a day to day basis.

• For pure procrastinative effect, always have your cute dog in the room to play with, or yell at. Having loud friends over produces the same effect. Whichever floats your boat.

• Start flipping through old useless projects – they start to look pretty good after the sewage you’ve been currently writing. Then close your current WIP and start working on the old one. This always induces mass time wastage!

• The internet: oh yes. Always have it on. Always check if you have messages. Always always always. For pure time-screwage, this is key!

• Start dusting your office – because you think this will clear away the cobwebs and you’ll start a sentence soon after. Usually this only induces sneezing and spasmodic coughing and self-loathing.

• Start writing a blog post about how you waste time procrastinating by writing blog posts.

• Always have a television nearby. This will maximize your no-work ethic. Tell yourself you need a break and watch a little Jersey Shore for renewed perspective. Make sure the TV is facing directly at you, or placed so you can see it with little effort. Volume must always be at mid or upper-mid-range to maximize distraction.

• Start reading a book. Preferably a recognized classic so you’ll really get that self-doubting engrained!

• Cookies, crackers, peanuts must always be within reach. And a Rubik’s cube. Hell, keep a Paint-by-Numbers set handy!

• Go do your laundry. Because clean clothes might help the old synapses start firing! This works with showering, as well. You might want to wash your hands every ten minutes, too. Fingernail clipping is recommended, especially when you stare at your own fingers for too long and get disgusted.

• Get showered, dressed, grab a pen and paper, head downtown to your favorite coffee shop, order a Triple Mocha Frappucino and a Biscotti, find a cozy spot in the back, and then start chatting with the waitress or whoever is around because your mind is completely distracted by all the activity. This is usually the best way to avoid looking at your manuscript for extended periods of time.

• Lastly, if you truly want to avoid writing for the day, watch ‘Road House’ with Patrick Swayze. This will make you wonder why your manuscripts have been rejected and this got made into a major motion picture starring Ben Gazzara, thus sending you into a self-doubting tailspin. (Note: this may work conversely – it may make you believe you are Shakespeare in comparison, which is a good thing)

2012-01-01T23:56:00.001-05:00

What You Can Do With Your Shiny Brand New Year

(A Positive Affirmation)

By David Hunter

"I have another 365 days to be a writer and I’m going to bloody well enjoy it!"

January 1, 2012.

I’m sitting at my desk looking at that date and it looks like it came right out of a science fiction novel. I have to admit, it makes me uneasy knowing that this might be the last year of our existence, if you believe some moldy old calendar created 2000 years ago by a group of toga-wearing perverts is accurate. Me, I think the world will plod along just fine, thanks.

I've heard this all before. When the calendar changed over to 1980, the same type of crack-pots came out of the wood-work and declared that the world would end and that California would sink into the Pacific Ocean, and the same types wandered out to the desert to perform mass suicides because they just couldn’t face the end of it all. Boy howdy!

I guess the joke’s on me if the Mayans were right (but what did they know, they didn’t even have internet!)

As far as I’m concerned it’s business as usual. I have another 365 days to be a writer and I’m going to bloody well enjoy it!

Positive Aspects about the End of the World

You won’t be able to avoid the election in November, but you can avoid tax season next year!

Run up your credit card bills. Who cares? Buy those Ronco Veggie-Smooshers by the truckload.

Let’s hope the Mayans were a little off on their calculations and the END comes during the telecast of the Oscars. Or the Super bowl Halftime show.

You know those cheesecakes you pass in the grocery store? The ones you eye ruefully? The ones you sniff at and say things like ‘I don’t need it’? Load up! It’s party time!

Now is the time to experiment with crop circles on your front lawn.

Nothing like a good para-sail off the roof of your local city hall!

Now you can build that 16 foot fence around your house to piss off the nosy neighbors. By the time it gets to court we’ll all be vapor.

You can now tell everyone EXACTLY what’s on your mind, at EXACTLY the most inappropriate times (which should make for some interesting dinner parties.)

Remember how you’ve always fantasized about mowing the lawn in your birthday suit?

Social filter? Out the window! (See above)

Finally, something will stop the Rolling Stones from performing 'Start Me Up' anymore!

All the best in the new year! And thank you for choosing The Writer's Den!

Merry Christmas From The Writer's Den

2011-12-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

RIP: Christopher Hitchens - 1949 – 2011

2011-12-16T00:40:00.000-05:00

NPR: On the death of Christopher Hitchens. || http://n.pr/uGd4ft

2011-12-15T23:10:00.003-05:00

Why I Write: Idle Speculation from an Idle Mind (David Hunter’s, If You Didn’t Know)

Recently a good friend asked me, ‘Why do you write, and why is it so important to you?’

Who knows why we do the things we do? Especially writing, that one profession that people roll their eyes at when you happen to mention that it’s your passion. So instead of going into a long-winded explanation of why I write and why it’s so important to me, I’ll give you a quick bullet list of reasons (some may echo yours, some may not)

So, Why Do I Write and Why is it So Important to Me?

1) To paraphrase Stephen King, ‘Why do you assume I have a choice?’

2) I have voices in my head that won’t shut up.

3) To kill the pain.

4) To still the demons.

5) I have things I want to say and I’ll get arrested if I say them out loud.

6) Because I have stories to tell, and adventures to go on.

7) I dream up characters and they haunt me until I put them down on paper.

8) I’m one of those people who need to express themselves or the top of their head blows off.

9) To join the conversation.

10) Because I’m full of regrets.

11) I have issues and stuff to work out.

12) I’m melancholy by nature, and moody. A writer!

13) I’m good at it; I enjoy it, so what the hell. Why not?

14) I’m a control freak and writing lets me be in charge of everything.

15) With all these crazy thoughts in my head, I either put them down on paper, or check myself into a psychiatric ward.

16) Because I just can’t help it?

17) Because I FEEL like a writer.

18) My mind naturally goes there.

19) Because I talk too much, and I finally decided to talk on paper instead, to the relief of all those around me.

20) Why do I write? Because it's either that or become a Longshoreman.

21) Because those pretty little things floating around in my transom look better on paper.

22) Because I'm an attention whore. There, I said it.

Photographic Evidence: Jack Kerouac's Beat Goes On || Via The Guardian UK

2011-12-14T23:27:00.004-05:00

Beat writers and artists at breakfast in New York, late 1950s. L-R: Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso (back of head), David Amram, Allen Ginsberg

A rather old article (2007), but for Kerouac fans one still worth reading: The Guardian UK

Related Madness: David Amram Remembers Jack

I Could Listen to Ray Bradbury All Day ...

2011-12-14T23:05:00.000-05:00

2011-12-12T23:19:00.002-05:00

The Naked Writer: How I Lost the War of Words (But Got It Back Again)

Coffee fueled invectives

Stained against the pages

Burning my forked tongue

With half-mumble iterations

Oh how they howl

See how they run

Half-baked exhortation
Scribbled by moonlight, or by sun

Making no sense of my neurons

A million thoughts stuffed in a sack

Hail to thee oh chaotic process

Electromagnetic ink stained flits

Straight from the mess

Scribbled thoughts, whereabouts unknown

Wired, alive; they deviate, wander and lose themselves

Through fields of the imagined places whose denizens wander;

Wander town to town

Straight from the horse’s mouth;

What is written on the subway walls?

Turn on the light and you will see

Ecstasy, Symmetry, Poetry

The internal struggle; the last gasp;

The last desperate attempt,

one last swing;

One last kick at the can;

One more fabulous fling;

I weigh the prose and cons;

The lights are down, it’s the empty stage;

There was the idea, the poor struggling fetus;

Born in the ether, died on the page

Only, reborn somehow;

Reborn; re-gifted; resurrected

Those penumbral lines, those darlings murdered

Those treasures we find, bury, and find again

Those roads gone further

I have but one life to give; one thing for the pain;

Inspiration locked in a trunk
And the key down the drain

Two thoughts diverged in a wood

And I took the one less thunk

2011-11-14T22:28:00.003-05:00

How to Write With Style

by Kurt Vonnegut

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful --- ? And on and on.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you're writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead --- or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don't you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

1. Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way --- although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

2. Do not ramble, though

I won't ramble on about that.

3. Keep it simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. "To be or not to be?" asks Shakespeare's Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story "Eveline" is this one: "She was tired." At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

4. Have guts to cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

5. Sound like yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

6. Say what you mean

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable --- and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers

They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don't really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school --- twelve long years.

So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify --- whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.

8. For really detailed advice

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.

In Sum:

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

3. Keep it simple

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

7. Pity the readers

from: How to Use the Power of the Printed Word, Doubleday

2011-09-17T01:00:00.001-04:00

10 Writing Tips from Phyllis A. Whitney

"... Like any other artist you must learn your craft—then you can add all the genius you like ..."

1. Hobnobbing with other writers will not make you a writer. And don’t spend so much time thinking about writing and “getting organized” that you forget to write.

2. Plenty of writers work all day and still manage to make time to write. Fortunately, “a writer’s office is under his hat; he can take it with him” even when he’s at a different job.

3. Blank on story ideas? Don’t wait for them to appear. Pick a subject, even if it doesn’t interest you, and start researching it. You will find something about it that does grab you. Or read the book of Proverbs in the Bible—it’s filled with hundreds of basic plots.

4. Writers need uninterrupted think-time when developing a plot. Stretch out on the couch, make your mind go blank, and focus on a story idea for an uninterrupted time. Afterward, your subconscious will continue to mull over your thoughts—and probably come up with something even better. Do not regard these subconscious gifts lightly.

5. No matter your outlining style, when you get stuck, written notes can renew your acquaintance with the storyline and get you back on track.

6. All stories have four possible beginnings: narrative, dialogue, one character thinking, or one or more characters doing something. All four have pros and cons. Whichever you use, your reader has to quickly find a character to care about.

7. Good stories are not written, they are rewritten.

8. Never forget that you won’t be a published writer this time next year unless you get busy on another book.

9. Every writer faces periods of discouragement, waiting to reach the next level. You plod along day after day at one level, with no sign of improvement or progress. Then, one day you seem to have taken a step up to the next level. So keep reaching forward.

10. Writers often stay young more successfully than other mortals do. Perhaps it is because no person with a keen and lively interest in life can really grow old.

2011-09-13T23:01:00.002-04:00

Judy Blume || On Writing

"... There are no hard and fast rules for writing, and no secret tricks ..."

Here is an interesting article I found about writing, by one of my favorite authors, Judy Blume. Hope you enjoy it ...

By Judy Blume || When I began to write, some people humored me. "You've always been such a dreamer!" Some discouraged me. "Do you know what the odds are ... do you know how many would-be writers there are out there?" Some were actually angry. "What makes you think you can write?"

A lot of my readers ask me for "writing tips." I wish it were that easy! There are no hard and fast rules for writing, and no secret tricks, because what works for one person doesn't always work for another. Everybody is different. That's the key to the whole business of writing - your individuality.

I once met a woman who wanted to write. She told me she'd read 72 books about writing but she still couldn't do it. I suggested that instead of reading books about writing, she read the best books she could find, the books that would inspire her to write as well as she could.

The best I can do is share with you what works for me. Good luck!

My Trusty Notebook

Before I begin to write I fill a notebook, jotting down everything that pops into my head about my characters and story—bits of dialogue, ideas for scenes, background information,descriptions of people and places, details and more details. But even with my notebook, I still don't know everything. For me, finding out is the best part of writing.

Write from the Inside

The best books come from someplace deep inside. You don't write because you want to, but because you have to. Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.

Those of us who write do it because there are stories inside us burning to get out. Writing is essential to our well-being. If you're that kind of writer, never give up! If you start a story and it isn't going well, put it aside. (We're not talking about school assignments here.) You can start as many as you like because you're writing for yourself. With each story you'll learn more. One day it will all come together for you, as it did for me with Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. I'd published two books and several short stories before Margaret, but I hadn't found my voice yet. I hadn't written from deep inside. With Margaret I found my voice and my audience.

Your Own Style

No one can teach you exactly how to write. Each person approaches creative writing differently. Every writer has his or her own method. I usually have a character or story idea inside my head for a long time (sometimes years) before I actually begin. I know where I'm starting and where I'm going but I never know what's going to happen in the middle or if the ending will be what I imagined on the day I began to write. It's the surprise that makes writing exciting for me. Other writers know everything before they begin. They make detailed outlines or have it all worked out in their heads before they put a word on paper. There is no right way or wrong way. There are a hundred different ways to tell the same story. Whatever works for you is okay.

Rewriting

Whenever I talk to kids about writing and tell them it's the rewriting I enjoy most, they groan. I guess if you're in school, rewriting means copying your papers over. But to me, rewriting is the most exciting part of the process. When I'm rewriting, I feel most creative. I've got all the pieces to the puzzle and now I get to put them together. I go through four or five drafts of each book. (When I was writing Summer Sisters I went through twenty drafts!)

Read your work aloud! This is the best advice I can give. When you read aloud you find out how much can be cut, how much is unnecessary. You hear how the story flows. And nothing teaches you as much about writing dialogue as listening to it.

Getting Published

Kids: I get so many letters asking me how you can get your work published. Don't even think about it now. Just write for yourself. If you want to share your work show it to family and friends. Some schools publish young authors' work in newsletters and magazines. Some classes are even writing and illustrating their own books. Or you can ask your librarian to help you find out which magazines accept original work from children.

Teens: A good bet is TeenInk. This is a national magazine based completely on teen generated material. Check it out.

Adults: Do your homework. Study the marketplace. Your library should have copies of Literary Market Place and Writers Market with names and addresses of editors and agents. Yes, it helps to have an agent (I didn't have one until I had already published three books). How do you get an agent? Choose a few names that sound right for you and send them samples of your work.

Rejection

For two years I received nothing but rejections. One magazine, Highlights for Children, sent a form letter with a list of possible reasons for rejection. "Does not win in competition with others," was always checked off on mine. I still can't look at a copy of Highlights without wincing.

I would go to sleep at night feeling that I'd never be published. But I'd wake up in the morning convinced I would be. Each time I sent a story or book off to a publisher, I would sit down and begin something new. I was learning more with each effort. I was determined. Determination and hard work are as important as talent.

Don't let anyone discourage you! Yes, rejection and criticism hurt. Get used to it. Even when you're published you'll have to contend with less than glowing reviews. There is no writer who hasn't suffered.

Teachers

I'm always asked if I was encouraged to write by my teachers when I was young. I can't say that I was. But writing came easily. I was a co-feature editor of the high school paper. And when I was a junior I had an English teacher, Albert Komishane, who gave us the freedom to be creative and appreciated our efforts.

Later, I took a class in writing for young people at New York University. I received professional encouragement from my teacher. When the class ended after one semester, I took it again. And before the end of the second semester a few of my stories were accepted for publication in small magazines. My teacher presented me with a red rose in class. I don't think anything is as exciting as that first acceptance, even when it brings a payment of just twenty dollars.

I wish every would-be writer could be as lucky as I was in finding a supportive teacher. Mine did not like or approve of all my work. But her criticism was presented in a positive way. She gave me the courage to try a novel instead of the rhyming picture books I was writing when I entered her class. I wrote the first draft of Iggie's' House while I was taking her course, turning in one chapter a week.

The Writing Life: Donuts
Once I begin a new book, the most important part of the process is perseverance. I try to write seven days a week, if only for an hour or two, until I have a first draft.

I'm a morning person—not the kind who rises at 4:00 a.m. and writes for hours before breakfast—but an ordinary morning person. I try to sit down to work somewhere around 9:00. I like to be dressed for the day, as if I'm going out to work, even though my office is just a few steps away. It's all part of my fantasy about having a regular job.

Once, I actually rented an office. We had just moved to New Mexico and I was having trouble getting started on a new book. I convinced myself that if I left the house each morning with the rest of the family, I would solve my problem. But the office space I rented was above a bakery and the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread and pastries drove me wild. Every day at noon I would rush downstairs to buy two glazed donuts and by three o'clock I would crave another round. After a few months and a few pounds I moved home again.

Scribbles
During the first draft of a book, which is the hardest time for me, I check my watch a lot and hope the phone will ring—anything to make the time go faster because I am determined to sit at my desk all morning. If my writing is going well, I may return to my desk after lunch to read over what I have written, to scribble on the printout, or to make notes in the little notebook I keep for each book (so that when an idea or a bit of dialogue comes to me I won't forget it).

When I'm rewriting I work much more intensely and for longer hours. Toward the end of the third draft the urge to finish is so strong that it becomes harder and harder to leave the story and return to real life. Once I'm truly finished with a book and the corrected galleys are in the publisher's hands, I feel sad. It's like having to say good-bye to a close friend. The best therapy is becoming involved with a new project. But that may take months.

Help!
For me, writing has its ups and downs. After I had written more than ten books I thought seriously about quitting. I felt I couldn't take the loneliness anymore. I thought I would rather be anything than a writer. But I've finally come to appreciate the freedom of writing. I accept the fact that it's hard and solitary work. And I worry about running out of ideas or repeating myself. So I'm always looking for new challenges.

Visit Judy Blume at her site: Judy Blume on the Web

2011-09-11T13:13:00.002-04:00

Here Is New York: A Democracy of Photographs

Photo No. 1621, by Katie Weisberger

2011-08-31T21:14:00.002-04:00

Writing: Do you Like it or Love it?

TheWriterFiles || 1.4

"... Well, sorry. I don’t play for the love of the game."
- Dirk Hayhurst

Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I always assumed writers loved to write, until I read an article recently, called ‘For the Like of the Game’ by Dirk Hayhurst, baseball player, and now writer.

Now, Dirk Hayhurst has decided to bust a long held myth about baseball players, the one about how they love the game, would die for the game, would play the game for free:

A couple of days ago, I was talking to a front office guy with the Bulls about how I got propositioned to write an article about life on the famous Durham Bulls baseball club. I said that I wanted to write about what minor league life is really like (a bad habit I have, one you may have noticed if you’ve read my book). He said, and I quote, “yeah, but no one wants to read about that, they want to read about the love of the game.”

I gave this instinctual cringe when he said that phrase, for the love of the game. He wasn’t, in effect, telling me what I should write, he was simply referring to a commonly held belief that all players play because they love baseball more than anything else in the world, and that love covers up a multitude of evils in what is otherwise a work to live, live to work, death and taxes human existence.

I got to thinking, does this apply to other professions? Certainly it does with acting – I’ve heard the great Anthony Hopkins himself say he harbors no real love for acting, it’s just that he’s so good at it and he makes TONS of money, so why stop?

Question: do you write for the love of the craft, or do you just ‘like’ it a lot?

The very idea that we could spend our lives doing something and not love it is a very foreign concept to me. Certainly baseball players, major leaguers even, love the fact that they get paid to play a game, but again, Mr. Hayhurst spills the truth:

Well, sorry. I don’t play for the love of the game. You may navigate away from this page now if that shakes your faith, but I don’t. I just don’t love the game enough to play for it and it alone. I love my wife. I love my family. I love the satisfaction winding up and putting a baseball where I want it, but I don’t love the game—not at the professional level anyway.

Would Stephen King continue to write if he was no longer paid for it? Somewhere along the line we have to accept the fact that in order to survive we must take a business-like approach to things, but does it kill the love for it? Back when I was a working musician I started to despise playing the guitar day after day. Sometimes I wouldn’t pick it up for weeks at a time. I think I kept playing it because everyone was always telling me how good I was at it, and I didn’t want to let them down. I fear that had I become rich playing music I would have been a miserable bastard (yes, money is great, but not at the expense of art!), and ultimately it was a badge of honor to be able to play the guitar, especially among friends and peers.

I like baseball, and that’s as good as it’s going to get. I like it more than any other job option that is out there at the moment, but I could never love it because I know it will never love me back. I’m just another man in a long, string of men it will break the heart and back of should I put either into its service for too long. It’s not worthy of my love, just my respect, which I freely give as long as it respects my wishes to keep the relationship strictly professional.

I love writing, I mean, I MUST, since I’ve been doing it for years and have not received much back in return. I’m not being disingenuous, I really mean it. I write for the love of it. I know this because I’ve had other ‘hobbies’ that I grew tired of; art, for instance. I was a good cartoonist, but doing it every day became a chore; and the fact that every one kept praising me for my skill was just inflating my ego – so I continued on with it because of that. We like it when someone tells us we’re good at something, don’t we? We like the compliments, so we keep going even though we want to stop, to the point that we start resenting our craft. My guitar, for instance, I started looking at it and the desire just was not there anymore to pick it up and play. Sad, because at one point in time I played for the love of it, for the hell of it.

So, dear baseball purist, you ask why then do I play? Assuming we are on the same page and not simply having this discussion for the sake of semantics, I play for the same reasons a lot of people do what they do: because I’m talented at it.

I like writing, I probably LOVE it, and I wish to do it for a living. I feel I’m good at it, and I hope it doesn’t kill the passion I have for it once I have to rely on it to make a living. I hope I get the same feeling of happiness every time I open a Word Doc or start a new story, that I don’t start to reject the craft when deadlines become a factor or bills are due, or I have to write every day or else. So far so good …

I’ve been yelled at when I correct fans about playing for love and playing for like. Their reactions range from shock, the kind that comes when a person says, “there is no God,” to twitching eyebrows and the covering of children’s—dressed in a little league uniform—ears. “Don’t say you don’t play for the love of the game because that’s what children believe you play for!”

I scratch my head at that comment, children believe. That’s because children can play for the love of the game. They should play for the love of the game because they are not in the age of accountability with families and bills and all the other constants that make growing up a balance of enjoyment and obligation. But, for some reason they are not allowed to know what’s ahead? Why is it when I tell them the following, it is not good enough?

“This is a great job, and I have a lot of fun doing it. But it’s not sum total of my being. If you want to do it, you’ll have to work really hard and make a lot of sacrifices. Maybe, when you’re older, you’ll get a chance to play it, too. If not, that’s OK, because you live for the love of life, and this is just another fun experience to try as you make your way.”

So, what do you think? Do you do what you do because you love it? Like it? Because you’re a talented writer and you suck at everything else? Would you do it for nothing?

Dirk Hayhurst was honest with us and himself, maybe we should be as well.

2011-08-23T22:39:00.002-04:00

Writing: Business or Pleasure?

TheWriterFiles || 1.3

... Even Rich Uncle Pennybags wouldn't know a bestseller if it hit him in the ass ...

Sometimes, when I’m really into a story and the flow seems unstoppable, ugly thoughts invade my transom: words like ‘accessible fiction’ and ‘mainstream' start to taint my resolve. And I start to question my work, too; is this story marketable enough? Can I sell it? Who will care about it? Am I wasting my time? My phone bill is due, what the hell am I doing?

The reason: as I get older (and bills start taking precedence) I find it harder to justify sitting at my computer for hours on end producing stories, stories that might not even sell or get published. Not a very lucrative business model. As writers, it becomes an act of faith on our part. And it doesn’t help when I keep hearing how J.K. Rowling hit a grand slam and is rolling in the dough.

But is that the ultimate aim? I would think producing quality work would be, because the money usually follows, maybe, possibly. Taking a purist point of view, I would tell you that we should write for the pleasure of it, and most of us do. But there’s that itch in the back of my mind that says I will be a failure if I don’t manage to make a living at it. Lord knows I have enough people in my life who tell me that all the time.

As I said, the older I get the harder the ‘money’ thing is to ignore. Friends, family, acquaintances, they all wonder why my ‘book’ isn’t finished, published, and sold in all the book stores yet and why I’m not on a yacht sipping champagne and smoking cigars. I begin to wonder this too, but …

It ain’t that easy, folks!

I write for pleasure – I have to or I’d go mad – but somewhere there’s a little gremlin muse tickling my ear telling me I need to write something for a mass audience or I’m doomed, doomed I tells ya! And I shoo him away, hoping he’ll go back to bothering Danielle Steel or Dan Brown.

Sometimes I listen to this evil muse – I conjure up a mainstream idea that I can write and possibly sell and go laughing all the way to the bank like John Grisham.

The eternal internal struggle!

I want everyone to like my book, certainly, but I also eschew mainstream; my mind is too unconventional, too quirky, and also I don’t know what mainstream is, or how to write it. I just write like me. When I tell myself I should target a book to a mass audience and make a truck-load of cash I only kid myself. I wouldn’t know how. Even if I did, what constitutes a ‘hit’ novel anyway? Ask anyone, bestselling authors, literary critics, J.K. Rowling; they’re just as baffled by what constitutes a success these days as I am. As William Goldman said once, “No one knows anything.”

Point of information: If I write a book, my own book, without residual thoughts of avarice and mass appeal and worldly love and it becomes a hit, I’d feel better. Baffled, but better. It’s The Stockton Paradox – Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

One last thing. I have nothing against mainstream authors or their resulting genre, far from it. If someone writes and this is what naturally results, great. They have a marketable commodity (Hello Stephen King! He once said “You can’t aim a book like a cruise missile) and I applaud them. But forcing myself to write this way goes against my grain. If I have a hit novel in me, wonderful, but if not, I can always host a gardening show in Amarillo. And even then I can write a book about it.

2011-08-17T15:52:00.004-04:00

When is Writing Advice 'Bad' Advice?
TheWriterFiles || 1.2

Recently I came across a set of rules designed as a simple way to motivate writers:

10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer

Write.

Write more.

Write even more.

Write even more than that.

Write when you don’t want to.

Write when you do.

Write when you have something to say.

Write when you don’t.

Write every day.

Keep writing.

— Brian Clark

Taken at face value these seem like pretty good tips, boiled down to the craft’s basic elements; after all, sometimes we need to be told in simple terms how to get something done. Sometimes we need to blow the complexity off to see what’s underneath.

The trouble is, it doesn’t work for everyone all the time. To simply tell someone to ‘write’ may not help them through a bad stretch, or help them finish a difficult scene, but given the same advice someone else may have an epiphany and dash off an entire novel. There is no master narrative when it comes to writing advice because what works for Jim-Bob in Texas doesn’t work for Maggie in Seattle.

So why listen to advice at all? Because you take what you can from it. If someone tells you to ‘write even when you don’t feel like it’, you’d either throw your hands in the air in exasperation at such an affront, or quietly say, “Yeah, that sounds reasonable,” depending on your mood at the time. As for me, sometimes I heed the advice, and sometimes I don’t. Take the above motif – ‘Write even when you don’t feel like it’ – I have often followed that advice, and have often ignored it. Sometimes writing when I don’t feel like it actually gets me back in the groove, and sometimes it doesn’t. Take it for what it is. Take it or leave it.

Some people don’t want to hear it. To some, writing advice is simply an annoying noise to be ignored. Certainly if you have written enough and produced enough, advice on writing is simply preaching to the converted. Write? Write more? Thanks Einstein!

There are also echelons to the writing world as well. An author who’s been writing for twenty years hardly needs me to tell them how to go about their business. If I told Stephen King that he needs to ‘write when you have something to say’ he’d probably clap his hands and have his bodyguards haul me away. But some poor writer just starting out in the craft might need to hear it - every time-worn bit of it.

In response to those ten items of advice listed above, a good friend and fellow writer said this:

10 Steps to Being a Better Writer?

11. STFU and stop giving advice.
12. Sometimes you need NOT to write.
13. Knowing when will make you a better writer.

So you see, sometimes writing advice is good, and sometimes doing the opposite of said advice is good. It depends on your mood, your experience, your situation, your learning curve, your level of writing skill, and who knows what else.

Jimi Hendrix, possibly the greatest guitar player who ever lived, said that he could sit there and watch the most God-awful band playing, and yet he was able to get something positive from it and learn something. Maybe that’s the way to go. Maybe that’s the approach to take when someone’s telling you something you already know or have heard a thousand times.

So, if someone gives you some writing advice today, be polite, smile and say thank you, then maybe do the opposite.

2011-08-09T23:25:00.001-04:00

Competing Against 30 Million Bloggers? Ain't No Thang!

TheWriterFiles || 1.0

Here I was, toiling away for years by writing in notebooks and loose leaf paper, mastering my cursive and getting carpal tunnel syndrome, and all the while a new universe was being created around me: the internet, blogging, email, the whole enchilada. Mundane as it seems now, it was a revelation when I finally got plugged in to it (The world is a pretty small place when it’s just you and a pen and a piece of paper) because I realized that I wasn’t the only one with dreams of being a writer; there is, apparently, 30 million others with the same idea. This could be disconcerting to the uninitiated.

Even now, being a veteran blogger and internet surfer (do we still use that term?) whenever I lift my head out of the sand and browse around, I’m overwhelmed by the sheer volume of bloggers and writers out there. I worry about getting lost in the shuffle. I worry that the nuanced little writer (me) will have to resort to low-brow tactics just to keep people’s attention.

But it’s just not me; I’m old school. I’m a quirky writer, not a populist writer. Alas, some people lead such interesting lives that they can post their misogynistic adventures daily and get heaps of readers. Me, I’m rather low-key. No jumping off cliffs and then posting about it on my blog the next day, sorry.

So, how to avoid getting lost in a literary wilderness? I haven’t the foggiest.

I suppose my philosophy has always been ‘slow and steady wins the race’. I suppose that the only competition I should be concerned about is me. I’m not going to shout over millions of other bloggers – that’s a fight I can’t win. I’m just going to keep chuggin’ along, working on my book, posting what I can. And occasionally I’ll jump off a cliff and write about it the next day (assuming I survive).

Question: is blogging a popularity contest or something? What draws the flies? I’ve seen bad blogs with hundreds of followers, and great blogs with as little as 5. There doesn’t appear to be any logic to it (I’m sure there is, I’m just being obtuse). I can offer this explanation: the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and some people are squeakier than others (You can draw them in, but you have to keep them there somehow, which is a harder proposition).

Take this blog for instance; it started out as a catch-all for my thoughts on writing and life in general. But after hearing many blogging ‘experts’ talk ad nauseum on the subject, I decided to narrow it down to a blog about writing. Well, mostly. My one-track brain gets derailed from time to time (See my last post, for instance).

Change-up

There’s a slight change in the program here at the Den. My writing column The Writer Files will appear once a week, hopefully on Wednesdays. Any additional posts will be consisting of variable subject matter. What that subject matter is, I cannot say. My brain will fire off something interesting, rest assured. It could be music, pop culture, or some variety of socio-political rhetoric. I’m also attempting to bring more guest bloggers in (a dastardly plan involving low-key blackmail is in the works).

Thanks for loitering! Come again!

2011-07-28T21:48:00.002-04:00

Unwanted Conversations with Walt Whitman

The other night Walt Whitman appeared in my bedroom. This in itself was not shocking, as writers tend to hallucinate from time to time (especially after a bottle of Johnny Walker). I stared in wonder for a few moments. Finally, I broke the silence.

“Walt Whitman? What the hell are you doing in my bedroom? Aren’t you dead?”

"Whatever satisfies the soul is truth." He said.

“Are you a ghost? Or am I just imagining you?”

"I exist as I am, that is enough."

“I mean, love your stuff. Leaves of Grass and all that …”

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars."

“Right. So, Mister Whitman, uh, what brings you by?”

"I act as the tongue of you, ... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened."

“So I guess you have some things on your mind …”

"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines."

“You’re not making much sense here, Walt …”

"O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) …”

“Uh, Walt? Mister Whitman …? I have to go to work in the morning …” I say, motioning to the digital clock on the bed stand; It reads 3:15 AM.

“Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d; Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined; The question, O me! So sad, recurring—what good amid these, O me, O life? (Begins walking around the room, his ghostly specter eerily translucent)

Great. Walt Whitman (Or his ghost anyway) is having existential issues. I offer him some tea, and tell him to relax, he’s dead. But he declines.

"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

“Walt, you gotta relax. Too bad you died two hundred years ago, you missed the advent of Playboy magazine, great articles,” I say, tossing the magazine at him, an October, 1988 issue by the way. It goes through him and lands on the floor.

"The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."

“So you HAVE read it?”

"O CAPTAIN! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done,
the ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won …”

Oh great, he’s ranting again. “Mister Walt? You got any useful advice for a struggling writer such as myself? You being a legendary poet and all …”

"A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls."

“Uh … “

“The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange …”

“Right …” I say, feigning a yawn, “Listen Whitman, I need some sleep, dude. Can you come back some other time? It’s 3 AM in the damn morning and …”

"To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle."

“… And some of us have to WORK for a living …”

"I henceforth tread the world, chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower."

“Could you tread somewhere else and come back tomorrow?” I say, picking up my alarm clock to show him the time, even though he doesn’t know what it is.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

He finally heads for the door, which makes no sense because he’s a spirit, ethereal. He’s still yapping as he does this.

"For we cannot tarry here, we must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, we, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! “, he cries, before disappearing through the wall next to the door.

Relieved that he’s gone, I nestle back into my bed and try to get back to sleep. I toss and turn for a few minutes, but the big fat image of Walt Whitman haunts my mind. Just as I start getting sleepy, he sticks his head back into the room.

"But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?" he yells, his barbaric yops sounding off the walls in a great big echo.

“Get lost!” I say, tossing a copy of “The Di Vinci Code” across the room at him.

"You will hardly know who I am or what I mean" he says, and evaporates.

I can’t sleep after this, so I go to the kitchen and pour out all my bottles of booze. I warm up a glass of milk and grab a package of Oreo cookies and eat half the bag. Finally I get dozy, stagger back to bed.

When I get back to my room, William Shakespeare is standing at the foot of my bed …
As he recites parts of King Lear, I drift off to sleep.

2011-07-16T13:04:00.002-04:00

Life Without a Net || Writer Dilemma No. 43

As it has been well documented here in my last few posts, I recently moved to a new apartment. The space is fabulous; large, clean, and comes with a panoramic view of the city (photos later) so all in all it’s been a great experience. Only, it was more expensive than I planned, and some things had to be cut back; Internet and cable primarily, albeit temporarily. I’ve been relying on radio and newspapers for my daily fix on news and events, but it’s been slow as molasses going uphill. Nothing can replace the immediacy of online news and the speed at which it transmits (The radio and newspapers report stories that are DAYS old. Ugh.).

Writers of my vintage (growing up in the 70’s and 80’s) are used to this kind of thing. Life BI (Before Internet) was quite interesting in that you could actually hear yourself think, and much as I love the constant chatter of the online community, it’s just too damned distracting and all-encompassing. When the net is connected, I just always want to be on, like being addicted. Just to go through the rounds of email sites, social networks like Facebook and Twitter (and now Google Plus?) takes hordes of time away from the real important things (Like eating and sleeping) and that’s no good. There’s a big fat stupid world out there, and sometimes you gotta go out galumphing in it instead of trying to interpret all the zillions of opinions online and making sense of it. Living vicariously through wires and microchips is no way to go through life.

In a way, it’s been therapeutic. I sit down at my desk and write for a few hours, then take the dog out for a walk in the large park behind the building. Sometimes I take Garcia Lorca with me, or Walt Whitman. When I come back, I sit down again and write. No blog post to worry about, no Twitter feed to update. My only concern has been writing.

I thought I’d have gone crazy by now, but it’s been strangely peaceful and calming

But BOY do I miss it.

A lot has been written about ‘online fatigue’ and its effects on people, but for writers it seems to be a double-edged sword. Much as we want to be off-line, to think, nay, to CONCENTRATE better, there remains a need for us to be there, in the midst of all the hurly-burly. Almost like Jack Kerouac and the Beats gathering at a coffee shop in the Village, discussing love and art and writing. Only they didn’t get eye strain and Carpel Tunnel syndrome from sitting behind a Laptop for hours on end.

Still, the question remains; can you live with the internet, and still live without it if you have to? Is there such a thing as moderation? Can we dole out our online time to natural levels and still be productive? Don’t know. As I mentioned, I get addicted at times, and it gets hard to stop. Discipline: That is the cheese!

May The Good News Be Yours

Despite the absence of internet, I have managed a daily writing regimen of 5-10 pages a day. It’s been nice. The new writing space probably has something to do with it. I have an actual office now, instead of a desk shoved between the bed and the closet. And there’s a constant breeze blowing in off the Lake (No, I’m not living on a tropical isle) and the spirit of this place seems a lot more calm and writerly. This bodes well, for I intend to write my novel, or get it finished at least, in the next few months. Huzzah to change, change is good.

Have to make this post short and sweet: it’s a beautiful summer day out there and I want to go out in it. There’s still breakfast to make – and orange juice to drink. Be well fellow writers.

I remain, David Hunter

2011-06-26T11:24:00.002-04:00

The Movable Writer: A Handy Guide

The writing space; it is the one area in which authors feel completely comfortable and in control, except when staring at a blank document for 45 minutes and panic begins. It is our domain, our kingdom, our private place. We can do anything with it, up to and including having hidden caches of chocolate bars and Twinkies, or lining the desk with ugly trinkets and funny objects. It is where we do our best work (sometimes) and when it comes time to dismantle it and move to another place, the writer becomes distraught and confused. In this instance, a mild sedative usually helps.

Here are a few useful tips to help ease the situation:

1.) Don’t Panic

2.) When forced to clear your desk out (usually at the last minute) leave your laptop connected. If you have nowhere to sit or place the laptop, use the floor or a space between boxes. In the event that your internet has been shut off, just hug your laptop. This produces temporary euphoria due to the release of endorphins

3.) If you have no laptop (this is the darkest stage of the process) keep a pen and notebook handy. Your writing may come out rather garbled, illegible and incoherent, but even the act of scribbling randomly will help ease the tension. Chant your favorite mantra for extra relief.

4.) In the unlikely event that no pen or paper is available, and no laptop, DO NOT PANIC – it is only temporary! In this case, food makes a good substitute (Pizza, beer, tacos, anything bad for you will do.)

5.) If you cannot write, read! Anything mindless, like a Dan Brown Book, will do. It’ll help you relax knowing you can write a better book in your sleep. In fact, the book may produce sleep-inducing enzymes that will help you relax (Or if you’re me, throw a tantrum and whip the book off the 8th floor balcony, which also helps relieve tension)

A Final Communiqué

This may be my last transmission for a while – the situation around me is quickly deteriorating; there are boxes everywhere, and the Television has been packed up. The stereo too (although I have a small one here beside me) and the only amusement we’ll have left until Wednesday is the dog!

Monday the internet goes off. This may be the darkest time yet – I will be unable to communicate to all of you for a time (except by way of the Library which has free internet service, but who wants to do that? Yuck. Although I may become desperate enough to drag my laptop over there and fight for a spot because plugs are limited there, and once the geek-boys get settled in, it’s over: nothing but ass-grooves and pocket-protectors)

It’s not all bad. There’s the new writing space to consider. The possibilities are endless; you can get a new lamp, new pens, heck, even a new laptop just for the occasion. How about an elaborate Surround Sound system to place around your space? Fiber optic lights to line your desk? And books! Now you can buy 12 more book shelves and fill them up. A coffee maker would go nicely on the corner of the desk. Maybe a slow-cooker too (your significant other will protest heavily, but this is our space!)

There are all sorts of possibilities to make you feel better about the move – and forget about the pain of lugging all your books and papers and office junk across the city (or even the continent), see? Glass half full.

But in all likelihood, you’ll just shove your old desk against a wall and put the laptop on it and start writing again, just like me.

Okay, I’m off. As I write this my roomie keeps walking behind me and asking me to do stuff, like pack. But I wanted to finish writing this before it all goes dark.

Keep a candle in the window for me.

Your pal, David.

2011-06-25T10:57:00.003-04:00

The Brief Return of David Hunter || Moving Violations, and Two Years of The Writer's Den

A while back I decided that I needed a change of scenery, so I started looking for a new apartment. This current one, in the heart of downtown Toronto, was starting to feel cramped; not enough elbow room for my brain. Plus, I was (am) getting tired of hearing the drunks singing on the street at 4 am on a Sunday morning, their inebriate voices echoing off the building walls and waking me up. Yes, this is life in Urbana.

The lure of this tiny place was steeped in Bohemian values, of course; it’s cheap, it’s small and cozy, and it’s in the middle of an urban and artsy area. It’s the kind of place that would make you feel like a writer, or supposed to anyway. But what of that? Do I have to live in a run-down area of the city in a shoebox apartment to feel like a writer? Maybe, if I were 25 again. Like the Grateful Dead’s exodus out of San Francisco to Marin County in the 1960’s, now all I crave is peace and quiet. But what a long strange trip its been.

And as much as I love the idea of a bohemian lifestyle, at my age I need something better to motivate me, something not quite so esthetic and external. After all, chasing that ‘Beat Writer’ lifestyle so lovingly immortalized by Jack Kerouac is futile; this ain’t the Village, man, it don’t matter where you write, as long as you write, right? Dig.

So now I’m moving. Can’t tell you how much that disrupts a me as a writer (and my life in general) but here I am packing up all my stuff, worried about bills, the moving truck, the new place – ugh – and nowhere in my brain has there been space for writing. Then I look around and see all the stuff I’ve been carrying with me: books, papers, magazines; after almost 40 years on this planet you can really accumulate a lot of shit. Then you have to drag said shit around with you for eternity – it begins to burden.

The worst part is I feel out of the loop and out of the groove. I haven’t been writing much and the flow is pretty much gone. It’s not like falling off a bicycle and getting back on – that’s easy, but after a lengthy absence from composing blogs posts and stories it becomes a little like that dream we all seem to have, the one where you’re trying to run away from something horrible but you can only move in slow motion; a ‘Writer’s Rigor Mortis’, for lack of a better term.

Such is the life of a writer; when you stop, you drop.

But I’m excited about the future too. I’m getting a much larger place, with my own writing space (this excites me more than anything!) and a new desk as well. The very idea of this artsy little nook has dominated my thoughts – even as I sit here among my boxed-up books and my near empty desk typing this.

This post marks another historic element; the two year anniversary of ‘The Writer’s Den’ blog. I’m amazed that it’s still around and that the followers have kept growing. This makes me want to try even harder to make it the best blog I can produce. Every post I write is painstaking because I know the quality of readers that come by and look around are above average, which probably has something to do with the infrequent updates. If you only knew how many abandoned and unfinished articles I’ve written because I thought they weren’t up to snuff; quality and not quantity being the operative term.

In any case, I want to thank all my loyal friends and readers for hanging around, even though I’ve been so scarce. I realize I haven’t updated this blog since April, and it really bothers me – I don’t want you to think I’ve been too lazy or lethargic to write. I’ve just been very busy (Nay, swamped) with other things, like real life. And if anything, the bane of most writers is real life.

So, onward and upward, goodbye to the old place and the old neighborhood (and hopefully goodbye to more old junk) and here’s to new places and entirely new junk! I’m off to pack up my things and head West (not the romantic ‘West’ of the Californian variety, although someday I’ll be there wandering the streets of San Francisco, or feeding the sea lions at pier 39) but West Toronto, where the air is decidedly less purple and my new writing space awaits.

Here’s to two years of the Den, and many more to come.

Keep the peace – David Hunter

It’s Not Just a Critique, it’s an Adventure!

2011-04-25T23:55:00.001-04:00

"...We writers can’t operate in a vacuum forever – eventually someone has to read the stuff ..."

Recently I went out on a limb and asked some writer friends for a critique on a story I had been working on. This particular story was written in ridiculous haste for National Novel Writing Month (An experience I recommend at least once, but that’s it)

The initial jolt you get from spewing thousands of words in a short span is electrifying; it feels like you’re really getting something done. Of course, you shouldn’t wait for a cram session like NaNo to get yourself motivated. I went in rather unprepared, with no outline, and only a sketchy idea that I thought my main character could pull off. The results were as expected; not great.

Cue the critiques …

I’m glad I asked for opinions, because I was under the illusion that the story was good, and the characters were working. Not really accurate, I must say. That’s the beauty of getting constructive criticism.

Not that I hadn’t suspected some of it; I knew the story was getting tough to write. Probably why I dropped it.

We writers can’t operate in a vacuum forever – eventually someone has to read the stuff. And of course, they’ll have opinions. I’ve learned not to be sensitive about it – life is too short. Instead, I’ve adopted a new set of Credos:

Just keep writing, eventually something’s gonna stick with the readers.

Not every story will be a home run. Let’s get real.

Take heart: If you can fix the story, fix it, if not, there are millions more out there.

Getting a heavy critique doesn’t mean you suck and you should trade your writer card in. It just means you need to ‘adjust’ things.

It’ll make your story better. It's all about the story, not you.

A good critique will also let you know whether you should continue on with the story. If no one cares about the characters, the story, any of it, that’s a bad sign. Life is too short to keep working on bad projects.

Getting a critique is actually a sign that someone cares enough about your writing to even bother to help you out. This is a good thing.

I must thank Nickolas Furr, actually, a writer friend of mine, for bringing this up. He gave my story a thorough going over, told me what was good and bad. I was surprised at my reaction: relief. I was happy to be talking about the mechanics of the story and the characters – and to find out the truth about it. Sometimes a story just doesn’t work – and when that happens it’s best to get back on the horse. Why not? There are no lack of words, ideas, directions. Can I save the story? The Character? Sure I can. Do I want to? Maybe, maybe not.

I wouldn’t have known that, of course, unless I let some beta-readers tell me what is what.

So, please, share your stuff with someone who’ll tell you the truth, or else you’ll be writing books that no one wants to read. And for us writers, that’s a fate worse than root canal.

The Story in Question: 500 Mondays, by David Hunter

Writers: Are We Always Honest With Each Other? Just Curious ...

2011-04-13T22:37:00.002-04:00

In an ironic twist of fate, I get most of my harshest critiques from non-writers – they seem to be the only ones without a filter when it comes to telling you what they think of your work. They’ll tell you everything, in a very unflinching manner. The problem is, do I take it seriously, or do the opinions of actual ‘writers’ matter more?

Upon finding out I was writing a book, a work-friend of mine recently declared that he too was a writer, had four or five books written, actually. He offered to bring in a few chapters for me to read – and I reluctantly agreed.

Big mistake.

Every time someone brings me something they wrote, especially someone who announces that they are suddenly a ‘writer’ I start to get this yucky feeling in my stomach. The work they hand me is usually so bad that I suppress the urge to light the thing with a match. And here’s the worst part; they always want an opinion! I used to smile and nod, and give my most upbeat speech, truth being so unruly and all … until I realize that its disingenuous. This poor schmuck wanted some real advice – so I decided that I would start being honest for a change. So I told him:

Your sentences run on too long. You realize there’s half a page without a comma or a period here??

When you write, don’t describe a guy going into the fridge, getting a beer, opening the beer, walking out to his backyard, sitting in his lawn chair, and taking another sip of beer. Shorthand!

Don’t reveal the entire story so soon or you’ll have no place to go with it. Your book will be over in three chapters.

Plausibility! Would this character really do this? Or That?

Does your computer have Spell Check?

Oh, the guy is an alien named Stan? Real name Xartona?

The basis of gravitas in a novel: Believable characters!

Do you realize that all your character’s names start with a ‘J’ ? Sounds like a Dr. Seuss convention.

Something must happen in every scene, otherwise its useless! Why is your protagonist just sitting there? Make him do something.

You sent this to a publisher??

Is this a children’s book, or …?

By the time I was finished, he looked like someone had kicked him in the groin. He had that thousand mile stare that writers get when they’ve just been lambasted by the truth. Another thing; unless he really put time and effort into the craft, he’d never be a writer. Writing is not a part time gig: you have to be committed because it’ll show in the work. I can tell when someone just ‘throws’ something together. I’ve been around.

I felt bad afterward of course; the truth was harsh. Is this why writers refrain from telling their peers the truth about their writing?

In all my time writing, only a few people have been honest with me – two are writers, and the rest are friends and family. Family will be honest with you if it suits them; most of them don’t think you’ll amount to much anyway, so they’ll gleefully tell you your story is lame and they’d never buy the book. Friends will generally look out for you and tell you if your story is good – or if it’s embarrassing. And don't ask your mom, she'll love it no matter what.

Fellow writers, on the other hand, will just blow smoke up your ass (which has its merits too)

Call it professional courtesy, or politeness, or distance, but getting a writer to give you an honest opinion is like getting a straight answer out of a politician. And the ones who do tell you a thing or two end up sounding a tad arrogant, at least to us sensitive types (I include myself in that). Maybe we're just too nice ...

But here's a breakthrough - use this line whenever you want an honest opinion of your work from a peer:

Come on, don't bullshit me!

It worked for Schwarzenegger! So folks, let’s have a little honesty among us writers. How can we get better unless we’re straight-up with each other? Not telling me that my story is the biggest hunk of garbage ever written is kinda like letting me walk down the street with a smudge of mustard on my face …

Random Samplings For Your Consideration

Five common traits of good writers:

(1) They have something to say.
(2) They read widely and have done so since childhood.
(3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a "capacity for clear thought," able to go from point to point in an orderly sequence, an A to Z approach.
(4) They're geniuses at putting their emotions into words.
(5) They possess an insatiable curiosity, constantly asking Why and How.

— James J. Kilpatrick

(1) the Muse visits during, not before, the act of composition, and

(2) the writer takes dictation from that place in his mind that knows what he should write next.

- from a review by Roger Ebert

Writer's Resolution

Enough's Enough! No more shall I

Pursue the Muse and scorch the pie

Or dream of Authoring a book

When I (unhappy soul) must cook;

Or burn the steak while I wool-gather,

And stir my spouse into a lather

Invoking words like "Darn!" and such

And others that are worse (Oh, much!)

Concerning culinary knack

Which I (HE says) completely lack.

I'll keep my mind upon my work;

I'll learn each boresome cooking quirk;

This day shall mark a new leaf's turning...

That smell! Oh Hell! The beans are burning!"

— Terry Ryan (The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less)

"The imagination doesn’t crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever’s there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he’s been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden brown collapse and the sprouting of snowflakes. What can he do about it?" — Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)

An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought."
— Mignon McLaughlin

"Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears..." — Jack Kerouac

"..the writer’s obsession – the desire to know and communicate, or, rather, to know everything so as to communicate with the greatest degree of precision." — Ivan Klíma

"I enjoy writing, I enjoy my house, my family and, more than anything I enjoy the feeling of seeing each day used to the full to actually produce something. The end." — Michael Palin

"That isn't writing at all, it's typing." — Truman Capote

Thanks for stopping by the Den ... honest opinions of this post will be ignored!

David Hunter >>

2011-04-06T20:11:00.005-04:00

Books! How Do I Hoard Thee? Let Me Count the Ways ...

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

- Oscar Wilde

A friend of mine, Queenie, visibly shudders whenever I pass a paperback kiosk, an old book store, a library, or a thrift shop with any kind of 'Books For Sale' sign in the window, especially when I start searching my pockets for spare change; she knows I'll end up buying something. More than that, I get this glazed look in my eyes and conversation drops to nil because I'm too distracted (absorbed!) by all the books. Who can resist the idea of possibly finding a classic novel for a couple of bucks? Apparently not me.

Halfway through the biography section, Queenie starts complaining that the place smells like rotting cardboard and mold. I don't disagree, but nor do I care: I find a copy of Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' for two dollars and contemplate buying it, even though I already have a copy sitting at home. In fact, I have multiple copies of books; most are innocent mistakes - I'd forgotten that I had them already.

I have books on my shelf that I'll probably never read, books that seemed like a good idea at the time; a quick glance at my shelf reveals copies of Dianetics, by L. Ron Hubbard, The Garden of Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, and a whole bunch of Shakespeare (Who reads Shakespeare, really? Be honest!) that I flip through occasionally, late at night, after a sip (or three) of wine.

It's the prices, I think. Hard to resist: 50 cents for The Great Gatsby? $1.99 for Atlas Shrugged? 2 bucks for the Ziggy Treasury!?

The hardest part is getting rid of books; I still have my copy of The Catcher in the Rye from the 7th grade. Why? who knows. I like to dip into my old tomes from time to time, I guess. Queenie thinks I'm nuts, "Why do you keep a book after you've read it??" she says. Meh, I'm a writer. We do crazy shit like that. I don't keep everything; I hurled Dan Brown's 'Deception Point' off my balcony after reading 10 pages.

There are books I've read dozens of times, like The Monkey Wrench Gang, Huck Finn, Catcher in the Rye, and Goodfellas, but I can't make my self throw them out or give them away. Is this book hoarding? Will I end up on one of those reality shows where camera crews wander through my house filming my shame for all the world to see?

Here's my theory; standing in a book store surrounded by musty old books, any one of which can be purchased for a pittance, is too much to resist. But will I actually ever read this copy of Atlas Shrugged I have clutched in my sweaty hands? Who cares! It's only a buck! It's the thrill of it! Like an addiction. Addicted to buying books! I feel giddy, passing the dollar over to the old guy behind the counter. Ha ha! Fleeced him, didn't I? I bring the book home, flip through it for a few moments, then shove it on the shelf beside my Scrabble Dictionary.

I Come Bearing Random Gifts!

What do you do when a friend randomly gives you his old books as a gift? This happens to me all the time. My friend Lambchop is a book hoarder, and once in a while he cleans out his sty and presents me with a random set of books he decides he doesn't want anymore. Most of them are horrid: a lot of cheesified fantasy books with muscular sword-wielding warriors on the cover with names like K'larr-Kuun. Don't get me wrong, I always love to get free books, but really, come on! I know it's the thought that counts, but when the thought is 'I'll clean out my shitty book collection by giving it to David' it kind of negates that sentiment (Said books don't last long on my shelf, I usually re-gift them to friends)

By the way, any of you want some books? Free to a good home!

Related Madness >> The New Yorker: Help for the (Casual) Book Hoarder

The Wheels on the Bus Go 'Round and 'Round

Every morning for the past six months there's been a girl on the bus who reads Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'. I don't know if she's actually reading it, judging by the slow migration of her bookmark, or attempting to look intelligent. I often do this; when reading something above average level, say, Othello, or any Carl Sagan book, and especially when there's a cute girl in the vicinity, I prop my book up, making sure she see's the name on the cover. Usually she stares blankly, eyes glassy and vacant. One time, I had my Jack Kerouac book on the bus - and a group of girls were staring at the cover. Ah, they noticed how cultured and intelligent I am! But when I looked closer, I saw that they were only trying to figure out how to pronounce KEROUAC.

Random Samplings for Your Consideration

If You're a writer you'll probably want to take the Writer's Oath. Don't want to get busted for malpractice now, do you? Writing without taking the oath could land you in the Literary Doghouse for eternity! Please raise your right hand ... repeat after me ...

The Writer's Oath

I promise solemnly:

1. to write as often and as much as I can,

2. to respect my writing self, and

3. to nurture the writing of others.

I accept these responsibilities and shall honor them always.

Gail Garson Levine, Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly

No Guts, No Grammar!

My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. ~ A.A. Milne

His sentences didn't seem to have any verbs, which was par for a politician. All nouns, no action. ~ Jennifer Crusie

The rule is: don’t use commas like a stupid person. I mean it. ~ Lynne Tress

If you can spell "Nietzsche" without Google, you deserve a cookie. ~ Lauren Leto

What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist? ~ Lynne Truss

It never ceases to amaze me how prosaic, pedestrian, unimaginative people can persistently pontificate about classical grammatical structure as though it's fucking rocket science. These must be the same people who hate Picasso, because he couldn't keep the paint inside the lines and the colors never matched the numbers. ~ Abbe Diaz

Take what the British call the "greengrocer's apostrophe," named for aberrant signs advertising cauliflower's or carrot's in local fruit and vegetable shops. — Naomi S. Baron (Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World)

Next Week: An In-Depth look at the secret world of Don Knotts! Don't Miss it! (Erm, just kidding)

Thanks for dropping by, and thanks for playing. Your Pal, David Hunter.

Now That I'm a Writer, What Do I Write About? Some Thoughts On That ...

2011-04-05T23:52:00.000-04:00

Another Meandering Blog Post by David Hunter >>

You picked up a book a few years ago, curled your lip in disgust, tossed the book down and barked 'I can write better than that crap'!

Sure; easier said than done.

My obsession with writing began in earnest in the summer of 2007, right after I flunked out of art school. The door to commercial art was forever closed to me (READ: Slammed Shut) when my professor told me that my drawing made him physically ill. He softened the blow by telling me that I was a great 'idea' man and that I should pursue writing instead. And so, with a trail of broken dreams behind me (Music, and now Art) I decided to go full-tilt boogie into another love of mine, writing.

Easier said than done ...

When I discovered Twitter and all the thousands of writers that lurk there, I found a like-minded tribe to call my own; we ate, breathed and slept writing; I was buoyed! I started a blog (This one) and started planning a book (Aren't we always planning a book?) and was generally stoked, I was going to fulfill a long-dormant dream.

Two years later, I still have no book.

There are lots of chapters of various manuscripts, of course. They lay strewn across my desk, or languish in color-coded files on my shelf. I have lots of ideas, lots of characters chirping in my head, some that won't go away no matter how I try. It's not that they're horrid and misbegotten, it's just ...

That first book is such a pain in the ass!

We all want to impress with that first manuscript; it's the one that demonstrates how much game you got, establishes the tone of your work. The trouble is, what road do you go down? Which genre? Do you need a genre at all? Decisions.

Another roadblock: I have lots of interests, maybe too many; Sci-Fi, Crime, Fantasy, Comedy, Action, Thriller - I have book ideas for all of them. I try mainstream, but get swamped by possible story-lines, or the story seems too mundane. I try action-adventure, but get swamped by minutia and detail; I 'ain't Tom Clancy. And the stuff I read is not necessarily the stuff I'd write. I love Stephen King, God love him, but I can't write in his genre. I love Edward Abbey, but I've never been to the desert. Then there's the voice in my head that says 'write a book that everyone can read! Sell the movie rights!', which is a concept that gives me the willies. I'd have to talk that one over with my soul.

I've toyed with the idea of creating my own niche; I love westerns, but not the Louis L'Amour type. I love detective stories, but not the Sam Spade type; too cheesy. I love fantasy, but wizards with long beards and and unpronounceable names make my face itch. I guess you could say that I have a particular way that I want to tell a story - and I haven't yet found the vehicle for it; that one story to hang my ideas on. It's out there somewhere, I know it.

The good news: lately I've re-focused and have started outlining a new novel that I hope to complete (Correction: WILL complete). I'm not going to qualify it; it's not a western, a fantasy, or Sci-Fi; it could possibly be mainstream, but I fear nothing I write could be termed 'mainstream'. Hopefully this new non-genre style will help me along the way. Maybe not. I think I just get bored too easily ... stupid internet and quick-edited movies! You've ruined my attention span!

So, what to write?

2011-03-23T22:44:00.003-04:00

Hunt and Peck? The Two Finger Polka?
(That's No Way to Get a Novel Written!)

I found this old chart at a garage sale last summer. I have yet to decipher it's strange meaning, but I'm betting those tattoos on the fingers mean something important! And It's obviously from the Nixon Era, when typewriters were heavily in vogue.

So, In a grand attempt to improve my typing (and giving my other six fingers something to do) I am using this chart to learn proper typing technique. After this post, that is, which was completely typed using two fingers and a thumb!

Good luck!

2011-03-15T21:22:00.003-04:00

Why I Blog: The Sordid Details

Part Zero || David Hunter

A blog is a personal diary, a daily pulpit, a collaborative space, a political soapbox, a breaking-news outlet; memos to the world. ~ Anon

When I was a kid I used to make my own newspapers; I’d cut out pictures and paste stories together. My mom thought I was nuts. In High School I joined the school paper, drew comics, and wrote stories. I guess I wanted to show everyone I was a genius or something.

With the advent of the blog, I finally had an interactive audience, a readership. I had a gauge for my writing other than Uncle Harry who always spilled beer on my stories.

Having a blog is an eye-opener, let me tell you. Stories you thought were masterpieces suddenly become yawn-inducing and plodding. That story you wrote about a Martian lawyer? Fail. The reason for such a precipitous fall in terms of your epic storytelling is not that you suddenly realize you suck, but that you’ve been writing secretly in an old notebook for 12 years and no one except a few unfortunate individuals got to read it. That’s not an accurate gauge for your writing; that person holding your story will always smile and tell you it was the greatest story ever told. Partly because said reader is being nice, but mostly because of that needy and pathetic look on your face that says ‘please God, let him like it!’. Readers can sense fear, you know.

I suppose another reason I blog is because I’m simply a narcissist; I blog because I can. It’s there, so why not use it? This leads to other dangers, like writing millions of self-absorbed posts about my pet rabbit or something. I’ve learned that people don’t really care about my pet rabbit, which leads to another thing I learned from blogging; the art of being universal. It’s a big world out there, I mean a BIG world. Writing about local events or using regional jargon just makes people’s eyes gloss over. I gradually expanded my thinking to a global scale – because writing about local affairs requires a whole back story for the audience, and I’m simply too lazy to oblige.

What was the question again? Oh right, why do I blog …

In a nutshell: I blog because it allows me to try out new material and to express myself. Writing in a notebook is great and all, but it’s in a notebook. Blogging is like being live on the air at a radio station: Immediate and thrilling.

Blogging has also helped me learn about my readers. They’re damn fickle, so it’s best to learn how not to bore them to death. This is vital, and you won’t learn it by scribbling in an old schoolbook; you gotta get out there and show those words to the universe. If you aren’t published, and you don’t blog, why the heck do you write in the first place? It’s there, use it! Get some eyeballs on that work!

Okay, sermon over.

This post was inspired by Katherine Grubb over at 10 Minute Writer who has posted responses from other writers about why they blog. It’s interesting, because most of those responses are the same one’s I would have given, if there weren’t a 200 word limit!

Feel free to leave a comment; tell me why you blog, and how has it benefited you and your writing.\

In Case You Missed it, here's an article I wrote called Going Nuclear: The 'Whoops' Factor, posted at The Bull

2011-03-09T22:42:00.004-05:00

What is a 'True Writer', Anyway?

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.
~ Robert Frost

The question was posed to me recently by a good friend of mine over at Writing Wanderlust. The exact question was: What qualities do you think would make a ‘True Writer’?

We all know that writers are born, not made. It’s innate, like being born charming and suave, except we’re born being able to make nice sentences and make up cool stories. But what is a 'true writer'? Can it be qualified?

I can only go by the writers that I admire and love, the one’s that I see as ‘true writers’, because I have no words to describe what a true writer is, except to show you.

I’m partial to ink-stained wretches like Jack Kerouac and the Beats, who toiled in abject poverty, who gathered in coffee shops to discuss ideas, who lived in run-down apartments and worked away at their craft on antiquated typewriters, oblivious to everything. They walked the streets, man; suffered, and art is suffering and overcoming adversity, and that’s what gives it its heart; that’s what writing is. If you’ve been there, then you can write about it. If you haven’t been there, how can you describe it?

Jack and his ilk were wanderers, thinkers. They didn’t just write it, they lived it; they paid their dues. In fact, most of the writers a half century ago were wanderers: Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck. They had to go explore the world because it wasn’t just a click away on a computer then. You actually had to go there.

Are there 'true writers' today? Sure there are; they’re the ones who recognize the wonderful literary past and try to aspire to it. They’re the ones who still write long-hand in loose leaf note books, the ones who write in coffee shops for inspiration , the ones who walk around with pieces of paper and a pen all day in case something brilliant comes to mind. They lurk in old used book stores, flipping through dog-eared paperbacks, ignoring stomach and time. They’re the ones who buy old Underwood Typewriters even though they can’t really use them anymore. They know what you mean when you say the names Holden Caulfield, Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby. They’re out there, those 'true writers'. They’re everywhere. And no can of Raid will ever kill them off.

And now the Grammar Lesson for today, RE the use of You and Me, I, Etc:

Consider the following sentence: You and I should have lunch.

Is the correct form of this sentence You and I ... or You and me ...? This is a common source of confusion in English.

Fortunately, there's an easy way to decide whether to use I or me in such sentences. All you have to do is drop the word you then try the sentence with I and me one at a time. For example:

• I should have lunch.

• Me should have lunch.

Clearly the preferred form in this case is I; thus, the original sentence was correct to use you and I.

Here's another example: He'll blame you and I. Drop the word you then try the sentence with I and me one at a time, like so:

• He'll blame I.

• He'll blame me.

You can see that the second of these is correct. This means that the original sentence should have been: He'll blame you and me.

Easy.

On a related note, when using phrases such as you and me, you and I or them and us, it has traditionally been considered courteous to place the reference to yourself last. For example, we prefer:

• He'll ask you and me later.

over:

• He'll ask me and you later.

WORDHUNTER: Cool and Beautiful

Firmament -The vault or expanse of the heavens; the sky.

Fixity - Stability

Palimpsest - A manuscript written over earlier ones.

Panacea - A solution for all problems

Dalliance - A brief love affair.

Demesne - Dominion, territory.

Demure - Shy and reserved.

Ebullience - Bubbling enthusiasm.

Effervescent - Bubbly.

Languor - Listlessness, inactivity.

Lassitude - Weariness, listlessness.

Lissome - Slender and graceful.

Lithe - Slender and flexible.

Mellifluous - Sweet sounding.

Onomatopoeia - A word that sounds like its meaning.

Surreptitious - Secretive, sneaky.

Susquehanna - A river in Pennsylvania.

Pastiche - An art work combining materials from various sources.

Desultory - Slow, sluggish.

Diaphanous - Filmy. A half-shadow.

Redolent - Fragrant.

Riparian - By the bank of a stream.

Susurrous - Whispering, hissing.

Scintilla - A spark or very small thing.

Sempiternal - Eternal.

Dissemble - Deceive.

Dulcet - Sweet, sugary.

"On Writing: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays"

1. A beginning ends what an end begins.

2. The despair of the blank page: it is so full.

3. In the head Art’s not democratic. I wait a long time to be a writer good enough even for myself.

4. The best time is stolen time.

5. All work is the avoidance of harder work.

6. When I am trying to write I turn on music so I can hear what is keeping me from hearing.

7. I envy music for being beyond words. But then, every word is beyond music.

8. Why would we write if we’d already heard what we wanted to hear?

9. The poem in the quarterly is sure to fail within two lines: flaccid, rhythmless, hopelessly dutiful. But I read poets from strange languages with freedom and pleasure because I can believe in all that has been lost in translation. Though all works, all acts, all languages are already translation.

10. Writer: how books read each other.

11. Idolaters of the great need to believe that what they love cannot fail them, adorers of camp, kitsch, trash that they cannot fail what they love.

12. If I didn’t spend so much time writing, I’d know a lot more. But I wouldn’t know anything.

13. If you’re Larkin or Bishop, one book a decade is enough. If you’re not? More than enough.

14. Writing is like washing windows in the sun. With every attempt to perfect clarity you make a new smear.

15. There are silences harder to take back than words.

16. Opacity gives way. Transparency is the mystery.

17. I need a much greater vocabulary to talk to you than to talk to myself.

18. Only half of writing is saying what you mean. The other half is preventing people from reading what they expected you to mean.

19. Believe stupid praise, deserve stupid criticism.

20. Writing a book is like doing a huge jigsaw puzzle, unendurably slow at first, almost self-propelled at the end. Actually, it’s more like doing a puzzle from a box in which several puzzles have been mixed. Starting out, you can’t tell whether a piece belongs to the puzzle at hand, or one you’ve already done, or will do in ten years, or will never do.

21. Minds go from intuition to articulation to self-defense, which is what they die of.

22. The dead are still writing. Every morning, somewhere, is a line, a passage, a whole book you are sure wasn’t there yesterday.

23. To feel an end is to discover that there had been a beginning. A parenthesis closes that we hadn’t realized was open).

24. There, all along, was what you wanted to say. But this is not what you wanted, is it, to have said it?"
— James Richardson

"The problem, if anything, was precisely the opposite. I had too much to write:

too many fine and miserable buildings to construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming,

too many characters to raise up from the dirt like flowers whose petals I peeled down to the intricate frail organs within,

too many terrible genetic and fiduciary secrets to dig up and bury and dig up again,

too many divorces to grant,

heirs to disinherit,

trysts to arrange,

letters to misdirect into evil hands,

innocent children to slay with rheumatic fever,

women to leave unfulfilled and hopeless,

men to drive to adultery and theft,

fires to ignite at the hearts of ancient houses. "

— Michael Chabon (Wonder Boys)

Okay folks, that's it for now. I'm off to go scribble for a while; I have places to go, and crazy characters to meet. Beats working for a living, don't it?

Your resident nut-bar and psycho-scribe, David

2011-03-02T15:12:00.002-05:00

Happy 107th Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

2011-03-01T00:55:00.003-05:00

Writing My Novel – A Curious Conflagration!
Where I tell you to Be like Stephen King; Write Madly, Write Often

"... 10 pages a day, 7 days a week, for the next three months. Tough ..."

Like many writers before me, I assumed that I could dash off a book in a couple of months like my hero Stephen King; 10 pages a day, 7 days a week, etc etc, before I realized that there’s only ONE Stephen King, and there was no way I could hope to match the speed at which he dissipates words. The man just has drive.

So I poke and prod at this Work in Progress, my Novel, not knowing if anyone in the publishing world is even remotely interested in it. I suppose that could be construed as a good thing; toiling in absolute ignorance and wallowing in my un-awareness allows me the comfort of writing without worry. But I worry anyway, worry I’ll get to 60,000 words and find out my premise sucks, or my story smells facile, or something dreadfully wrong was happening during my absent-minded composing of the first draft and I just now noticed. Horrors.

I mean, we the writers always assume that we know what good literature is, right? We’ve read enough damn books. But something curious happens when we begin to write our own story – we start to lose the big picture; we’re too close to it. When I start re-reading the stuff (a cardinal writer sin), I get this yucky feeling, like I want to change everything! But then I remember (Insert old chestnut here): write now, edit later. Preferably 6 – 8 weeks later, when the manuscript takes on a strange and foreign feel.

10 pages a day, 7 days a week, for the next three months. Tough. I only think in these terms because I’m an impatient cuss, and I like to think the faster the book is put down, the more inspired it will be. Of course, the opposite is true too; the more time you spend on a book, the better it may be in the long run. I suppose it all depends on the individual. Doesn’t it always? I still think it’s possible to write a book in three months. Stephen King wrote one in a week (The Running Man, I think), but as we all know, he's a special case.

The Ink-Stained Wretch

But It’s always the same: A new month starts, or year (choose your time frame) - denoting a ‘fresh slate’ - and the itch begins to really put some miles on the page and get the novel underway. When this feeling overwhelms me, I usually stand up in the middle of the room, stretch, do some isometric yoga, beat my chest a little (Yes, we men do this, don’t be fooled) and affirm our intentions to the (empty) room and the cosmos call back their approbations. Sitting down in front of the stinky old manuscript, I decide to tackle it, finish it, get it done, by god, and nothing’s going to stop me, is it? Stupid blinking cursor! I … erm … curse you! “I hereby evoke the literary deities to come down and save me” I say. I beseech the spirits of Hemingway, Steinbeck, and London (And yeah, even Louis L'Amour) hoping some of their magic goes into my fingertips and brains.

So I sit down to write my ten pages …

… and wouldn’t you know, the phone rings, the dog pukes on the rug, there’s a knock at the door, 50 friends show up unannounced, or the scent of unwashed laundry assails my nostrils reminding me it’s time to do the wash. Oh and the dishes have to be done or else the ‘significant other’ will garrote me.

Life, there’s nothing like it!

I hearten myself by remembering that Stephen King shoved himself down in a boiler room of his apartment building, knowing he had two kids and a wife upstairs and barely two nickels to rub together. Somehow he tossed all this aside and wrote. He called it his ‘escape’. I call it 'Being able to zone out'.

(Stephen never had to deal with the distraction of Internet, cable TV or 24-hour news cycles, but I digress …)

Affirmation: I will keep on, because I have to, damn it, because I want my book published (And of course, I want heaps of praise lavished on me … )

I guess I’ll just have to buy ear plugs and ignore the stinky laundry, at least until I get my ten pages ...

Here's a few 'Writer Affirmations' to light a fire under your ass:

You will be dead one day, so you better get that damn book finished.

You can’t be called an ‘author’ unless you finish the damn book.

The sooner you finish the damn book, the sooner you can loiter around Chapters and see who’s flipping through your book without buying it.

You can’t talk to anyone about your writing anymore because they roll their eyes because you haven’t finished the damn book.

Type faster, finish the damn book.

You will become a taxi driver, or a Gardening Talk show host in Amarillo, Texas instead, because you didn’t finish the damn book.

This concludes our broadcast day ...

Yours truly, David Hunter

2011-02-08T22:50:00.001-05:00

F. Scott Fitzgerald || In His Own Words

Quotes on Writing and Other Things

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it; all my life.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

"I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

"My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

"You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy." — F. Scott Fitzgerald

"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being." — F. Scott Fitzgerald

"If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter--as indissolubly as if they were conceived together."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional." — F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Sometimes I don't know whether I'm real or whether I'm a character in one of my novels." — F. Scott Fitzgerald

2011-01-17T13:42:00.002-05:00

Martin Luther King || In His Own Words
A Special Edition of the Den

❝An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. "
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would still go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"A lie cannot live.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized, cruelly mocked, but it an never be taken away unless it is surrendered.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝Life’s persistent and most urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝Right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝No person has the right to rain on your dreams.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.

❝We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.❞

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

August 28, 1963
Washington, D. C.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must ever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow. I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!" And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

"At the center of non-violence stands the principal of love"

— Martin Luther King Jr.

2011-01-13T21:17:00.004-05:00

Stephen King || In His Own Words

Quotes on Writing and Other Things

❝Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.❞ ~ Stephen King

❝Good books don't give up all their secrets at once." ❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger. ❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book. ❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar. ❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. ❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud. ❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people … The real difference is that [Harry Potter author] Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and [Twilight author] Stephanie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good." ❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. ❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝So okay - there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair--the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.❞ ∻ Stephen King

❝If you're just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television's electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.❞ ∻ Stephen King

2011-01-12T22:04:00.004-05:00

No Comment!

A Commentary on Comments

The Mandate of the Writer’s Den was originally supposed to be ‘newsflashes, bits of info on writing, experimental stories, and general life experiences.’

It appears that lately that’s changed; I’ve become a sort of ‘writing cheerleader’ and ‘inspirational Sherpa’. Now, that’s wonderfully cathartic and spontaneous and all, but since I’m doing all this cheerleading I figured that there’d be more, um, feedback. Feedback is good; it lets a writer know they're not alone, and that they're having some sort of impact on the reader.

I mean, I thought writers (most of you are writers, aren’t you?) were big-mouthed narcissists, loud and verbose and opinionated (At least I am), and I always envisioned a blog where dialogue was open and free, where ideas and inspiration and debate were bandied about, insults hurled; in short, more opining! I’ve had 14,000 views on this blog since it went live in July 2009, and about 80 comments, so the odds are I’m probably just blowing rhetorical smoke most of the time (I’d be left speechless by my own posts too, were I you) and I probably don’t leave much to comment on, making me the actual narcissist.

I suppose I can handle tacit and quiet readers, I’m quite used to talking to myself anyhow. I’m curious though; do many of you get comments on your own blogs? Do you comment on other blogs? Cat got your tongue? Is it just me? (I fear so.)

What’s in store at the Den in 2011 … and Beyond!

I’m a tweaker; any changes I make tend to be slow and ponderous, kind of like cautiously poking an animal carcass with a stick. You may have noticed that annoying banner at the top of my posts, the one that says Wiki-Den? That’s my subtle attempt at a ‘home page’ type thingy, where I can archive all my posts, links, and all that good stuff. So far it’s been good; I don’t know how useful it is to any of my readers, since no one tells me anything (No comment!)

Also, after 2 years of blank stares, I have finally heeded some of the advice that many bloggers spout ad nauseum; CONTENT IS KING (Until it abdicates!) so I figure that if I can’t inform you all the time, I’ll entertain you, and vice versa. Don’t know if it’s working (do let me know? Leave a comment? Hmm??)

Having said that, let me comment (ahem) on this very post, called, appropriately, The Wednesday Post. I had been perusing my Blogger Stats and found that one of my most viewed posts was for a Wednesday Post I did 6 months ago. Due to my relatively slow nature I did not catch on that maybe people would want to read a newsletter type thing, posted once a week on the same day, on schedule (another good Blog tip: have a scheduled posting so people know where to find fresh words) but I would never have figured this out since no one talks to me or leaves a comment.

The ‘newsletter’ type post is one of my great loves; it allows me to post humorous bits, wordplay, and funny stuff, and also allows me to let you know what’s happening in that strange little place that is David Hunter’s universe.

Disclaimer: If you think I’m being whiny about this ‘comment’ thing, I can assure you it’s all in jest; I love each and every one of you who comes by and reads this blog, even if you don’t leave a comment (I never give up, do I?)

Random Samplings for your Consideration:

Words you think are nice but wouldn’t use in a sentence

(or maybe you would, who knows?)

USUFRUCT: a legal right to use and derive profit from property belonging to someone else provided that the property itself is not injured in any way

USURY: an exorbitant or unlawful rate of interest

USURP: assume: seize and take control without authority and possibly with force; take as one's right or possession

ZUGZWANG: (German for "compulsion to move", ) A situation in a chess game in which a player is forced to make an undesirable or disadvantageous move.

OPPUGN: To assail with argument

KNEESIES: To press one’s knees against another person's knees.

BUGBEAR: An object or source of fear

BUNGHOLE: A hole in a barrel or keg

UNCTUOUS: (of a person) Excessively or ingratiatingly flattering; oily: "anxious to please in an unctuous way".

PLAUDIT: An expression of praise

PLENUM: A space considered as fully occupied by matter

PLEONASM: The use of needless words.

PLICA: A fold of skin

SAPID: Pleasant to the taste

GESTALT: A unified whole

GEWGAW: A showy trinket

FLATUS: Intestinal gas

PLOSION: A release of breathe after the articulation of certain consonants.

DISPORT: To amuse oneself

Odious Phrase of the Week

"Results-Oriented Business"

Comment: Is there a business that is not 'results-oriented'? Duh.

(I'm guilty of using this phrase too.)

William Faulkner || In His Own Words

❝ Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write.❞

༺༻ William Faulkner

T w i t t e r - C e n t r i c

I'd like to thank a few people for inspiring me this week ...

@LaynaPimentel - Who is always writing, and inspires me to get off my ass and get something done.

@LornaSuzuki - Talented 'Imago' writer who heaps praise on me (And thus, inspires greatly)

@Auteur_Geek - Who seems to always have my back, even when I'm being accused of politicizing tragedy, as one Twitter follower did this week.

Okay, that's all for now folks, I'm outta here; got some more writing to do. Stay tuned for the Writer's Den Weekend Edish (Possibly) and keep scribbling. Also, please leave a comment if you so desire, it's free, and I don't bite (maybe)

PS: Will someone please click 'follow' and become the 200th member of the Live Writer's Society? That 199 is unnerving! You get no prize, and you get no praise; all you get is me! Take care now ...

"It's like the Penguin said, we gotta make that move towards redemption"

~ Elwood Blues

2011-01-02T13:43:00.005-05:00

Shut Up and Write: The Official Manual

Time to Whoop Ass and Write

Well, we're into January, a new year, so time to make a few resolutions. One of them being to actually get something done this year. So I present to you, in hopes of motivating the both of us, the Official Shut Up and Write User Manual. Sections and sub-sections are subject to change in future versions. Have fun, take heart, and Shut Up and Write, will'ya?

At first glance the term ‘Shut up and Write’ may come off as rather crude and low-brow terminology; after all, our language is filled with plenty of subtle and elegant ways to communicate ideas. Seeing as how writers can be a little thick, sometimes we need to cut right through the bullshit and get right to the heart of the matter.

To wit: You talk too much. Shut up and write!

Shut Up And Write is a rather broad statement, of course, and is not meant to be rude, or mean, or insulting. It’s really just a humorous nudge, a reminder, that you’re wasting valuable oxygen yapping away or Tweeting to friends instead of writing. It also applies to people who talk a lot about writing, but don’t actually write. This is a problem, and must be corrected. Here then is a compendium of things you do that are stunting your writing, so you’ll know when to Shut Up And Write:

Staring at your computer screen – Do not do this. Type anything. Type your name, what you had for dinner, what color your socks are, but do not stare at that screen for longer than 5 minutes. Headaches ensue, and your soul turns to mush. Shut Up And Write.

Itchy Bum Syndrome: You type a sentence, and then go to the refrigerator for some Oreo Cookie Ice Cream, leaving your sentence hanging and your flow disrupted. Please do not do this. You could spill ice cream all over your computer, or get sticky fingers, or grow lethargic and apathetic and not want to write anymore. Oreo Cookie ice cream is great for the synapses, but bad for writing. Plus, this is not really about ice cream, it’s about not wanting to write, or being afraid to write. This is characterized by constant shifting of the ass in your chair and thoughts other than writing begin invading your skull (IE did I pay the phone bill? Should I take the dog for a walk? Why is there a mushroom cloud on the horizon, and should it concern me?)

Tweeting, Facebooking, Foursquaring, etc etc Blah blah blah – This is the bane of writers: Tweeting too much. I know it’s fun, and that guy named @ShitMyDadsays is endlessly hilarious, but come on! You gotta pull it together! Only you can prevent a book not being written! Unless you can get your pet Shitzu to write your book for you, it’s probably best to get a move on and start writing. I suggest curbing your 12 hours of Twitter down to, say, 2. There! Then you’ll have lots of time to write!

That stupid Television – Yeah, Jersey Shore is filled with entertaining idiots who make us feel exponentially more intelligent when we watch their antics, but Mike ‘The Situation” and "Snooki" already have book deals. If that doesn’t motivate you, nothing will!

The Stupid Blog hasn't been updated for 12 hours! Oh No! – The land of the damned! The blog is what I turn to when I’m not feeling the prose flow on my novel, but the problem is the blog is too easy, we could write posts in our sleep because it’s largely plotless and free association. If you find that you’re using your blog as a crutch for not writing, then rectify it immediately. Only blog after you have made a significant contribution to your novel.

Section 2, Article A: You Know You're In trouble as A Writer If ...

You start talking about your book, again, and your friend's eyes begin to roll upwards in exasperation and you hear these sentences all the time:

"God, just shut up and write a book already!"

"I'll take you seriously when you've written something."

"How can you be a writer? You haven't written anything!"

"Is that the little book you been working on? For 10 years? Are you gonna finish it sometime this century?"

Section 2, Article B: Looking mournful while walking through a Chapters book store because your book isn't even finished, much less stacked in a display alongside Stephenie Meyers and Stephen King and Tom Clancy in a giant retail bookstore.

Okay this one is self-explanatory.

Section 3, Article A: Doubt fills your soul, so you just ... stop.

Common causes:

You think you suck.

The guy you got to Beta Read your manuscript has the IQ of a piece of wood and he only reads the backs of cereal boxes anyway. Yet you are devastated when he tells you there isn't enough sex or death in the book and he fell asleep after the first chapter.

Your friend looks at the manuscript in your hand and asks you dubiously how many pages they have to read because the longest thing they ever read was a Newspaper and they are unsure of it and are too lazy to actually do you a favor and read it for you (Friendship may be on rocky ground after this little encounter.) So you take it the only way a writer ever takes it: you suck.

Every word you type, every sentence you mangle, every phrase you torture, it's like being forced to listen to a John Denver greatest hits CD on repeat - Torture! Torture! But neither your writing, or John Denver, are that bad. Stop the soul sucking doubt! Just shut up, keep writing, it'll all work out.

Section 3, Article B: It's not you, it's them.

In conclusion it, it's wise to remember that nobody cares about you until you've written something, which is not to say you suck or you're useless, but merely talking about writing amounts to just that: talk. And, it's not you, it's them. People are results oriented; it is the rare human being (usually an elderly person, or an extremely positive and enlightened and inebriated Uncle) who will take you at your word that you are writing a book, will finish the book, will become rich and famous because of that book. The human race is wary by nature; so you must prove to the sneering jerk at your office that one day you too will wear elbow patches and smoke a pipe and do the lecture circuit talking about your book. This is the only way! You must Shut Up and Write!

Related Madness:

ShutUpAndWrite: A Master's thesis

2011-01-01T15:00:00.001-05:00

Bare Bones Writing – Dig It!

The Lost Blog Post

This was a post I was supposed to put up at the Writer's Den in late November, explaining my futile and strange writing process while attempting National Novel Writing Month. At the time it sounded rather whiny and excuse-laden (typical David!) but upon re-reading it I find that it's quite interesting: it illustrates the inner workings of a writer In Media Res; in the midst of the chaos we call 'Writing'. So enjoy my first blog post of 2011, a little thing called ... Bare Bones Writing.

Three weeks ago I was cajoled into taking part in National Novel Writing Month, not because I was shamed into it, but because I saw how much fun everyone was having in the grand attempt to get a book written in 30 days.

Did I say fun? Ha!

Sure, the word count starts off at a manageable clip: 1666 words a day. But when you miss a day, that total climbs by 58 words, then 118, and so on. There’s really no time to mess around. When you start missing two or three days, well, it gets ugly, but the prospect of a marathon session of 10,000 words always seems to soothe the blasted soul and scuppers the guilt for a while.

Until you miss another day, and another. And, who wants to slug out 10,000 words under such pressure?

This is what happens when you start to ponder the incoherent mess being dictated on the pages of your novel. You get afraid to look at the jumbled words and tortured prose! Lord, it hurts your head! And quite frankly you just can’t get past the fact that it’ll all get fixed in the editing, so you start avoiding the stinky old thing (okay, I’m really talking about me, here).

I’ve been experimenting with a kind of hurly-burly, helter skelter, willy-nilly type of writing which involves putting thoughts down as fast as my hunt and peck style typing allows, and ignoring any and all major editing/rewrite urges. And it gets worse; in lieu of fast-dwindling plotlines and story arcs, I’ve been introducing seemingly endless and ridiculous plot twists of the daytime soap opera variety (any port in a storm), I figure that any superfluous plotlines can be edited out later and any extraneous characters can meet a hasty demise by falling off a cliff in a sudden flash of contrivance. There’s also lots of conversations between characters, mostly because I can write them quickly (yes, I cheat in this manner).

Due to this harried method of writing, there are a plethora of notes to myself between paragraphs, like “extend scene at later date” or “Kill this character, he’s annoying!” - mostly because I’m just getting the bare bones of the story down, exhuming that skeleton, and putting off the major restructuring until later (even though it kills me).

Half the time I’m only describing scenarios in half-baked and stunted prose in a kind of Hemingway/Dr. Seuss prose meld:

Danny walked into the room, plopped onto the couch, and pulled out a cigarette.

Further description only takes time and time is of the essence!

This is what I call bare bones writing.

Of course, when I do this I tend to undercut the real reason for doing NaNo in the first place: to get 50K done in 30 days. You’d figure that being more verbose only helps the narrative and fills pages faster, but that’s secondary; once I get the damn story down I figure I can expand scenes and get the numbers up. But boy is it ever hard not editing while the whole mess lies on the page! The urge to go back and sort out the disaster is almost palpable.

But still I keep writing, leaving a trail of badly composed (or decomposed) phrases and half realized scenes.

The chase for 50,000 words can get crazy, the mad scramble, fingers tripping over each other; words aren’t flowing like endless rain into a paper cup! There’s no time, ideas and scenes are drying up, characters start to drift, reasons for certain characters existing become dubious! Emergency! My story is going down the tubes!

But I take a deep breath and say to myself, 'I’ll sort the disaster out later.'

I suppose “Bare Bones Writing” can be summed up like this: get the damn skeleton of the story down before you forget it, and having a good ending and writing towards it helps. So does a few gallons of coffee.

Curiously, I’ve avoided a stagnant story by hopping from one scene to another, back and forth in the time-line of the book, kind of like that Pulp Fiction movie. I figure this happens because a scene stops working and it's easier and more conducive to my lazy nature to just switch to something else, another scene or setting. Of course, that other scene you abandoned is still there, waiting like an old container of food you forgot to throw out last month. So there are bugs in this particular system; it is what it is (A phrase that is quickly gaining vogue, and fast becoming an annoyance).

Anyway, how has National Writing Month affected me? Well, I have a lot more respect for the work that goes into a long form story. While it’s all well and good to pile through a manuscript at light speed to get it done in 30 days I must admit that I suffer the age old problem of not having enough of a story to stretch out to 50,000 words. Also, my own deficiency – typing at 25 words a minute, tends to slow the process down.

But here’s what I’ve learned by attempting NaNo; writing at a 2000 word a day pace requires a strong story, a strong story arc, and strong characters. It also requires a free-form attitude; a story has to go somewhere, and if a scenario pops into my head I have to go with it, because there’s no time to hedge, and because I can always edit it all later.

Also, I’ve learned that the prospect of having a book written in 30 days is quite a thrill, an instant gratification if you will. It’s become a kind of obsession; I wanna see the damn thing written, and I wanna have people read it, and I can find no better reason for writing a book and being a writer.

Huzzah, and happy scribbling …

(David, presently): As of this this posting, I have actually managed to get my 50,000 words down. I have a book written, albeit it's quite a mess. Editing!

Thanks for dropping by the Den, and keep scribbling. Happy New Year, and let's make 2011 the best writing year ever ...

2010-12-31T13:53:00.002-05:00

The Last Blog Post || 2010

Year End Address || David Hunter

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go. ~ Brooks Atkinson

At the end of my first decade on this planet, when 1979 turned over to 1980, I remember being frightened by the number. It represented the unknown, and for a little kid the unknown was awfully scary. When the 80’s ended I was more concerned at how strange the number 1990 looked. And in 1999 …

Well, you get the picture.

I’m nostalgic by nature; I used to get sentimental watching final episodes of old TV shows (The best was M*A*S*H, but the saddest was The Wonder Years …) and watching a new year turn over always gave me that weird feeling, that sensation of being hurled into unknown territory, after all, the New Year is unscripted, an unknown quality. What lies beyond December 31st, 2010? Who knows.

It’s all in the mind of course; there’s no cataclysmic changes set to occur on January 1st, 2011, but the very date suggests change, catharsis, new meanings, new resolves, new feelings, new directions; and when the winds of change take hold people tend to go with the flow. In other words, people will change things, not a date on a calendar. But oh what those changes bring!

Because it’s not just a new year, but a new decade, and if you look back, you’ll find that the turn of a decade brings about great changes (See 1950: Rock ‘n Roll, 1960: Hippies, long hair, Psychedelia, 1970: Disco, Earth-tones and Heavy Metal, 1980: New Wave, MTV, Rap …etc, etc ... and with that in mind, I guess there's nothing we can do but ride the wave of this coming decade, and see where it takes us.

“No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.” ~ Charles Lamb

So here’s to the people we left behind, the old ideas, the old ideologies, the old words, the old fads, crazes and trends, the old clothes, the old music, the old movies, the old TV shows, the old books, the old tragedies, calamities and disasters ... but not the old friends: those we keep, along with our hope for a better world.

It’s a new decade; let’s make something new of it, okay?

Happy New Year, from David Hunter and the Writer’s Den.

Le Buzz on David Hunter

I’ve been growing rather static on the blog front, so I decided to try and improve the Writer’s Den with a few changes. Mostly, the changes consist of writing more content (and more writing is always a good thing …) and adding more features. One of those features is a new Dashboard called Wiki-Den, intended as a hub for all my activity: links to stories, articles, Writing Resources and other things. It’s a ‘Wiki’ because it’s short and quick information for the time-challenged peruser. And lord knows we’re all a little time-challenged …

I want to thank all of the Den’s readers, you made this blog possible; I know it’s been wildly inconsistent and there have been long stretches between posts, but I hope to rectify that in the New Year (Hope!) and I wish you all the best. Be blessed, and take care. May we meet again soon.

Time to go: It’s almost 2011, and there’s a party waiting.

2010-12-28T21:00:00.003-05:00

Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing Fiction || How to Write with Style

"... Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia ..."

I posted 'Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing' a while ago, but I recently stumbled across another article he wrote on writing called 'How to Write with Style', so I decided to pair the two for your reading pleasure. Check out the Video of Kurt Vonnegut reciting his 'eight rules', posted below.

Happy New Year, and thanks for stopping by!

Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing Fiction

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. -- Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing Fiction, from Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), p. 9-10:

How to Write With Style

Kurt Vonnegut

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

I won't ramble on about that.

3. Keep it simple

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers

They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don't really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school --- twelve long years.

8. For really detailed advice

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.

In Sum:

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

3. Keep it simple

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

7. Pity the readers

from: How to Use the Power of the Printed Word, Doubleday

2010-12-27T23:21:00.004-05:00

The Definition of a Writer, and Writing
or "We Gonna Get all Metaphysical on Y'all"

"...It's possible to have a writing career, but you must first ask yourself if, in fact, you are a writer ..."

Yes, I know, It’s been too long between posts, but life has a way of wedging itself between me and my writing, like a fat guy (Horizontally Challenged) blocking my view at the movie theater because he had to go get some Goobers and is trying to get back to his seat.

First of all, I flamed out on that NaNo thing (National Novel Writing Month) and I felt like such a failure (There’s no shame in it, it happens) but I was nearing exhaustion from work, and time had become my enemy (is Time not always the enemy?)

And then there was Christmas. Ugh. Family, friends, constant drop-ins, get-togethers; it was like one giant unending cocktail party. I marvel at ANYone who can write during the chaos of the holidays.

The festive season tends to shake writers out of their natural state (brooding anti-socialism) and into a kind of gregarious drunken happy-state, which is not conducive to a writer’s constitution - at least not mine. Also, trying to find an hour of peace to get something down onto paper can be a struggle; during the holidays people tend to stick around till the wee hours of the night, drunkenly talking your ear off.

Finally, After all the folks have gone home or have crashed for the night, around 3 AM, say, I'd get all excited to write. I'd quietly sit behind the computer and open a Word Doc, the booze still coursing through my brain, and we sit there, the Doc and I, with only that cursor flashing between us, and …

Nothing. Sleep just overwhelms me. This is the usual occurrence.

Slowly I come out of this happy-ass state, usually takes a few days, because every time I look at my blog it gets stinkier and stinkier and I start hoping that the last post from a month ago changes magically on its own (alas, it won’t) …

Happy New Year! Start Writing, sucker!

A new year is upon us, and as usual writers make confirmations anew; resolutions are made, promises sworn, ideas hatched, and we can forget all about our perceived failures (Read: Self-Loathing) because the slate is clean, and we can plan that book (or plan to finish it) because there’s a whole shiny new year ahead, and anything is possible.

It always helps to define what a writer is, and what writing is, to aid us in our lonely struggle, to get some sorta perspective on things, because all that info on writing we've been absorbing must have clogged up our fragile brains over the long year. I mean, haven’t you heard millions of words pertaining to writing in the past 12 months? Time to etch-a-sketch it. I perused the web and came up with some definitions of writing and writers; call it a "Drastic Renewal of Purpose", if you will.

Keep it Simple Stupid

Definition of a writer? Isn’t it “One who writes?” … yeah, it is, but as usual I need to go deeper, because I like to confuse the issue. I like to throw some Metaphysical Mojo into the conversation just for good measure. Sure, a writer can be defined as 'One who Writes' but, does that include shopping lists?

One who writes, or has written; a scribe; a clerk.

One who is engaged in literary composition as a profession; an author; as, a writer of novels.

Okay, not bad, better than 'One who Writes', ya know?

Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols (known as a writing system).

Well Duh!

Here's a more involved definition:

What is A Writer?

I heard one person suggest that defining a writer is as simple as asking, "What makes an electrician an electrician?" In this line of thinking, an electrician is someone who installs electrical devices and wiring. A writer then is someone who writes.

If this definition is true then you are not a writer if...

1) You have a major in journalism, but do not use your skills.

2) You only wait to write if there is a reason to write. In effect you will only write if a publisher asks for an article.

3) You dream of writing someday, just not today.

I don't know if this if an absolutely perfect definition of a writer, but the truth that 'writers write' is sometimes lost on individuals who have the skills to write, but rarely do.

Around the world there are individuals today who will sit down and map out a story, they will craft a sentence, they will dangle a few participles and some may finish a story they've been working on for months.

These tenacious individuals sit down each day to write. They may not be published yet, but they have already accepted the mantle of 'writer' simply because they have given themselves to the art of writing.

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." - William Faulkner

It's possible to have a writing career, but you must first ask yourself if, in fact, you are a writer.

I don't want to belabor the point, but if you have the skills to write and refuse to use them you may not be a writer. This point is made by looking at a person who has gone to electrical engineering school yet refuses to actually work with electricity.

I am well aware that the notion of defining a writer is broad and often vague. It is also a point that can be argued ad infinitum, but the purpose of this article is to encourage those who are dedicating themselves to the craft of writing. Each day you are learning more about yourself and how you define the world around you. With each pen stroke you are creating new worlds or explaining old ones. With each stoke of the key you are answering questions or creating new ones to consider.

If you simply must write today, as you did yesterday, last week and last year - you are a writer.

"If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor." - Edgar Rice Burroughs

Okay then, have we sufficiently clouded the issue? Here's a more humorous take on the whole thing, by none-other than Matt Groening:

Your Guide to Artistic Types || Matt Groening

Writer:

Dominant Personality Type: Self-Absorption.

Secondary Personality Traits: Pomposity, Irritability, Whining.

Distinguishing Features: Nervous Twitching, Bad Posture.

Haunting Question: "Am I Just A Hack?"

How to Annoy Them: Ask "But How do you make a living?"

(Yes, all of the above describes me.)

Writing can also be defined as a magical thing, a communication thing, an expression thing, or anything you want it to be. Let us not say that a writer is merely 'one who writes' ...

What Is Writing?

The act of writing seems akin to transmutation of elements. Sherman Alexie, in his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, advises “Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace.” In this case, the writer is like a magician, conjuring a story that creates a way to provide a home with the most elemental of home necessities: the fire in the hearth. - Suite101

Or how about Stephen King? He thinks it's Magic ...

Stephen King believes that writing is telepathy. “All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation” (p. 95, On Writing).

He acknowledges that writing is a learned skill, but continues by asking, “…do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations? We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style…but as we move along, you’d do well to remember that we are also talking about magic” (p. 131).

Alchemy?

Jim Carroll, Writing as Alchemy

Some writers evoke the imagery of writing being akin to alchemy. Speaking of Jim Carroll’s writing, Cassie Carter titled her master’s thesis “Shit into Gold: Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries and Forced Entries.” Carter discusses how writers, specifically Jim Carroll, can reinvent themselves through writing. The Medieval allusions throughout Carroll’s writing support this image of the writer as an alchemist.

To Nathaniel Hawthorne, writing is Gold:

“At some future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page.”

So what is Writing? What is a Writer? I couldn't tell you, but it might be Alchemy, it might be Gold, it might be Magic, and yes, it could be simply what it is: A writer writes, and writing is writing. But If I accepted that answer than what the hell am I writing this post for? (Because I'm a writer, and I have now come full-circle somehow ...)

Thanks for sticking around. Let's have a productive year and fill the world with words, okay?

Your Friend, David Hunter (Happy New Year!)

Psst: Sorry about some of the links, have to fix em: It's late here, and I'm a bit groggy =)

2010-12-19T00:25:00.003-05:00

David Hunter: Exposed

This was an Interview I did a while back, so I thought I'd post it here at the Den ...

Courtesy of, and Thanks to, Natasha Hollerup for Interviewing me, couldn't have been easy!

Hello and welcome to a new installment of “What’s Your Story?” The subject interviewed in this installment is David Hunter, who is a musician and a writer, as well as a blogger of news and writing advice. So, please give your attention, applause and goodwill to Mr. Hunter.

***

Can you tell everyone your name and location?
-I am David Hunter, and I dwell in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Okay, David, here is a set of simple questions to begin with:

When and where were you born?

-I was born in Toronto on October 19th, 1971. Wow, that date is starting to sound ancient! I was raised there as well.

What are your hobbies?

-Photography is a big passion of mine; and playing my guitar (A 1978 Les Paul Gold Top! Got it when I was 16 and I still have it…) And of course reading books, if that qualifies as a hobby. I’d say writing, but that’s not a hobby, it’s my obsession, my life!

How long have you had these hobbies?
-I think I was born with my hobbies! Although I started playing guitar rather late in life, at age 15, I excelled at it quickly.

What is your favorite part about this hobby?

-That I was good! Within a few weeks I joined a band at school. People look at you different when you can play a guitar! I enjoyed that look.

What kind (s) of music do you like (bands, singers, genres)?

-How much time you got? There are so many; Rock, jazz, folk, you name it. If it sounds good, it is good. I do hold a special place in my heart for the Beatles. As Jazz goes, Joe Henderson is my favorite. And Vince Guaraldi. And Dave Brubeck! (See? I need more time…)

Who is your favorite author? Why?
-No one could turn a phrase as well as Edward Abbey, even though the man himself was a bit of a wing-nut. I picked up a copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang when I was 12 and I never put it down. I still have that copy! His writing influenced me the most. He was a curmudgeon and a desert anarchist who burned billboards because they were an affront to the landscape, but boy could he write some beautiful stuff!

What was the most recent book you’ve read?
-Blood Work, by Michael Connelly.

What were your thoughts on it?

-It was good; a page turner. But the movie was better, I thought. It’s one of those books that I forget soon after I’ve read it. How terrible is that?

What are you currently reading for enjoyment?

-I’m currently re-reading an old YA (young adult) book that I’ve had since high school; the Pigman, by Paul Zindel. It’s one of my all-time favorites.

What place do you/have you want (ed) to visit or live in? Why?

-I think I’d like to bum around Europe. It seems very artsy and writerly; and it always impresses people when you say you’ve been places like Paris or Rome! Also, I could use some worldliness. I’m not very worldly.

What do you want to be when you grow up?
-Who wants to grow up?

Here are some more personal questions:

What three people are most important to you?
-Carl Sagan, Chuck Jones, and my mom and my sister. Not in that particular order, either.

Could you describe them and your relationship to them?
-My mom is the last parent I have, so that’s self explanatory. She really belongs in the mom Hall of Fame.

Can you describe your most recent mistake or failure?
-I should have taken writing in college instead of art; big mistake. Here I was with all this writing ability and I was still clinging to my artistic dreams. It was a hard lesson, learning that you’re not going to be successful at something you love, and I loved to draw, but it wasn’t my real destiny; writing was. Thank the gods for writing; it saved me.

Can you describe your most recent victory?

-I consider all my new friends on Twitter a victory for me. My dream was to be a part of a creative community and I accomplished that in the past year; they sustain me; they inspire me!

What do you do for a living?

-I work in a Food Container plant; in the mornings I do maintenance, in the afternoons I work in the Graphics department.

Tell me about how you got into your line of work.

-I had experience as a superintendent, so I applied for this job. It’s your standard 9 to 5 job, and it’s very similar to being a super. I needed money, and my only skills include writing and being creative, things we know are hard to make money at. The Graphics part came about because I asked them to train me. I wanted to move up in the company.

Do you like your job?

-It’s a job, that’s all; nothing special. I guess that means no!

If you could do anything now, what would you do? Why?

I would love to be writing for the local media, become a part of the writing culture here in Toronto. Nothing says success like having your friends read your stuff in the local paper.

What do you hope to accomplish in 2010?
-What does any self-respecting writer want to accomplish? A finished manuscript, a book deal, and to move to California. Me and California, we are meant for each other!

How do you think you’ll accomplish this/these goal (s)?
-By working my ass off. I know of no other way.

What genre of writing do you want to write in?

-I love crime fiction, but I also love Sci-fi, (although my lack of scientific knowledge may prevent this…) and comedy; but I’m mostly mainstream. I love many genres, so I hope I don’t get pigeon-holed into only one genre.

Why do you gravitate towards this particular type of writing?

-Under the Mainstream banner I can write anything, and I won’t get trapped in any one genre. I like to be free in what I write.

Do you have any works in progress?

-I have a story called Rockfish, set in the 1960’s.

Can you give a brief summary about it?

-It’s about a kid named Everett Winsom who is dealing with his messed up family…and the fact that he has a bad leg that makes him limp, makes him the butt of jokes at school. He has a mentally challenged brother and an alcoholic mother…

When do you plan to become published?
-As soon as humanly possible! But seriously, it’s a long process. These things take time. Like any optimistic writer, I plan to get published within the year, which is wishful thinking at best.

If you become a published author, would you quit the job you have now to primarily write?
-A resounding “hell yeah” would be the appropriate response.

What do you like the most about writing? What do you like the least?

-I like the creativity of it; creating my own characters, my own worlds, where I can explore things. Plus, let’s face it, writers like to write because they can be in charge of these little places in their minds; petty tyrants lording it over imaginary people. That’s the real reason people write, isn’t it? What I hate is the doubt; it can be debilitating.

What do you want to be doing in five years?
-Writing for a living; traveling the world; hopefully engaged with love and life.

List five adjectives that describe yourself.

-Stubborn, sensitive, creative, easy-going and hungry (Hungry being a metaphor for motivated)

How would you like to be remembered?

-Through my writing. I hope students will be reading and discussing my work a hundred years from now, and I hope they say, “He was pretty cool”.

Can you name three to five things you want to do before you die?

-Meet the perfect girl, fall in love, have children, become a published writer, and bowl a 300 game.

***

2010-12-08T20:45:00.001-05:00

John Lennon || 1940-1980

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,

They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe

Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,

Possessing and caressing me.

Jai guru de va om

Nothing's gonna change my world,

Nothing's gonna change my world.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,

That call me on and on across the universe,

Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box they

Tumble blindly as they make their way

Across the universe

Jai guru de va om

Nothing's gonna change my world,

Nothing's gonna change my world.

Sounds of laughter shades of earth are ringing

Through my open views inviting and inciting me

Limitless undying love which shines around me like a

Million suns, it calls me on and on

Across the universe

Jai guru de va om

Nothing's gonna change my world,

Nothing's gonna change my world.

2010-11-11T03:48:00.006-05:00

JUST A COMMON SOLDIER

(A Soldier Died Today)

by A. Lawrence Vaincourt

He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast,

And he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past.

Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done,

In his exploits with his buddies; they were heroes, every one.

And tho' sometimes, to his neighbors, his tales became a joke,

All his Legion buddies listened, for they knew whereof he spoke.

But we'll hear his tales no longer for old Bill has passed away,

And the world's a little poorer, for a soldier died today.

He will not be mourned by many, just his children and his wife,

For he lived an ordinary and quite uneventful life.

Held a job and raised a family, quietly going his own way,

And the world won't note his passing, though a soldier died today.

When politicians leave this earth, their bodies lie in state,

While thousands note their passing and proclaim that they were great.

Papers tell their whole life stories, from the time that they were young,

But the passing of a soldier goes unnoticed and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution to the welfare of our land

A guy who breaks his promises and cons his fellow man?

Or the ordinary fellow who, in times of war and strife,

Goes off to serve his Country and offers up his life?

A politician's stipend and the style in which he lives

Are sometimes disproportionate to the service that he gives.

While the ordinary soldier, who offered up his all,

Is paid off with a medal and perhaps, a pension small.

It's so easy to forget them for it was so long ago,

That the old Bills of our Country went to battle, but we know

It was not the politicians, with their compromise and ploys,

Who won for us the freedom that our Country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand,

Would you want a politician with his ever-shifting stand?

Or would you prefer a soldier, who has sworn to defend

His home, his kin and Country and would fight until the end?

He was just a common soldier and his ranks are growing thin,

But his presence should remind us we may need his like again.

For when countries are in conflict, then we find the soldier's part

Is to clean up all the troubles that the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honor while he's here to hear the praise,

Then at least let's give him homage at the ending of his days.

Perhaps just a simple headline in a paper that would say,

Our Country is in mourning, for a soldier died today.

2010-11-09T03:47:00.002-05:00

The Writer’s Den Dictionary of Stupid Words
(Brought to you by the Merriam -Webster Jest Division)

I love words as much as the next person, but some of them are just plain ridiculous and have no place in the English language (except in ridiculous blog posts like this one) and they also sound rather strange when uttered during casual conversation. They're also fun ... so without further ado, I give you the first edition of the Dictionary of Stupid Words (all entries are listed non-alphabetically for your inconvenience)

for•sook (-s k ), 1. To give up (something formerly held dear); renounce: forsook liquor.

2. To leave altogether; abandon: forsook Hollywood and returned to the legitimate stage.

Abibliophobia
The fear of running out of reading material

Bewigged
Wearing a wig.

Osculate
To kiss, To come together.

Persnickety
Snobbish: Pretentious.

Refusenik
A soviet citizen denied the right to emigrate.

Scaramouch

Depicted as a boastful coward or buffoon.

Xiphoid

Shaped like a sword.

Yeoman

An attendant, a servant, or a lesser official in a royal or noble household.

Zyzzyva

Any of various tropical American weevils of the genus Zyzzyva, often destructive to plants.

om·buds·man (mbdzmn, -bdz-, -bdz-)

1. A man who investigates complaints and mediates fair settlements, especially between aggrieved parties such as consumers or students and an institution or organization.

mammothrept - a child brought up by its grandmother; a spoiled child

footle - act foolishly, as by talking nonsense

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis - exposure to volcanic dust.

Absquatulate ~ To leave or abscond with something.

Bloviate ~ To speak pompously or brag

Brouhaha ~ An uproar

Callipygian ~ Having an attractive rear end or nice buns

Discombobulate ~ To confuse

Fartlek ~ An athletic training regime

Gardyloo! ~ A warning shouted before throwing water from above

Sialoquent ~ Spitting while speaking

Snollygoster ~ A person who can't be trusted

Hemidemisemiquaver ~ A musical timing of 1/64

Slangwhanger ~ A loud abusive speaker or obnoxious writer.

Fatuous ~ Unconsciously foolish.

Eructation ~ A burp, belch.

vomitory ~ a passageway leading to a tier of seats in a theater, (especially a Roman amphitheater), or a stadium.

Tittynope ~ refers to a small quantity of anything left over be it a measly morsel of gristle remaining on a dinner plate, or the dregs of draft beer left nestled behind in the bottom of a tankard at a tailgate party.

Silly Etymological Artifacts

• There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger.

• Have you noticed that there is neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

• English muffins weren't invented in England.

• French fries do not originate in France.

• A guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

• And there are no hogs in Hogmanay.

• And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

• You cannot buy boots in Boots nor virgins in Virgin. You cannot buy threshers in Threshers and the Superdrug chain is a big disappointment.

• Quicksand only works slowly

• If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth?

• One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?

• If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

• If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

• A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

More Wordy Stuff

1. Barking: Thought to be named after the London suburb, home to a former asylum site; hence 'Barking mad'.

2. Binge: A bout of uncontrolled indulgence.

3. Blighty: A word much loved by RAF types in WW2. Originally from the Hindi word "bilayati" meaning foreign.

4. Blimey: Could be shorthand for "God, blind me."

5. Chum: A "chummy" used to be a chimney sweep’s assistant.

6. Cuppa: First used for tea by PG Wodehouse, the playwright.

7. Dear: From an old English word, "deore", meaning "much loved."

8. Grotty: Sixties Liverpool slang.

9. Jolly: From an old French word meaning "festive".

10. Slag: Derived from a 16th century German word meaning "dross".

More Stupid Words, for your reading pleasure

Flink

A group of twelve or more cows

Dipthong

According to Merriam-Webster, "a gliding monosyllabic speech sound".

Occiput

Pronounced "awk si put", it's a word for the back of the skull

Effluvium

A disagreeable smell.

Indubitably

So evident it can't be doubted.

Sardoodledom

Another word for "staginess" or "melodrama".

Cahoots

Partnership; comradeship.

Scootch

To move a short distance. In a sentence, "The inchworm scootched across the branch."

Foofaraw

To make a big deal out of something of little importance. Also means to add flashy or excessive decoration.

Friderday

When you start partying on Friday and it lasts well into lunchtime on Saturday.

Whelming

Adjective used to describe something neither overwhelming nor underwhelming. In other words, something that's just right.

Bovicide

To kill a cow.

Ort

A morsel left after a meal.

Gruntled

To be in a good mood and the opposite of disgruntled.

More earth-shattering literature to come: stay tuned!

2010-11-07T01:23:00.006-04:00

The Absolution of Danny Bloom || David Hunter

This is an excerpt from my NaNo project called '500 Mondays'. It's largely unedited and raw, but I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think. -- David

"...Alcohol and Irish don’t mix, I’m told, but today I didn’t give a rat’s ass. There was something heavy coming down ..."

It was a nice day for a funeral.

The sky was slate gray and it was spitting rain and I was sitting in my best friend’s car, not wanting to get out and deal with anything. I had just come from my step-father’s funeral, and I had no feeling about it. Everyone else was crying and mourning, but I had no emotion in me. I felt nothing. Well, that's not entirely true; I felt flat and depressed, which is as good as nothing.

Bobby finally prompted me. A little.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” he said. I knew he only said it to be the obligatory ‘best friend’ and I loved him for it. Plus, he probably wanted to get at the buffet.

“Naw man. I can deal. Besides, you have to get back to Westchester.”

“You sure?”

"Yeah. You don’t wanna be around a bunch of blubbering family members. It’s kind of depressing.”

“Alright. If you need me, just call.”

I got out of the car, and watched Bobby pilot his BMW out of the forest of black rain-slicked limos that were piled in front of the estate, all filled with relatives, friends, business associates, big-wigs, and wealthy philanthropists all coming in to pay their respects (and probably to glad-hand and photo-op and get face time with each other, the bastards) to one of the most influential financiers in the state of New York, my step-father Nicolas Castle.

This was gonna be a long day.

* * *

I was trying to remain inconspicuous over by the buffet table, nibbling on capers and brie, but the parade of condolence givers was unrelenting. They all seemed nice enough, and some of them I knew, but really, this wasn’t my world. My heart was still stuck in Boston, where I grew up before my mother abandoned me at age 9. Sad story? Yeah, but, what can you do?

I saw Celia, my step-sis, and I felt a wave of relief. She came over and took my hand. Her eyes were all red, like she’d been crying for three days. She was just about my age, 18, while Charles, Cauldon and Alexa were a few years older.

“Oh, Danny …”

She started crying again. All I could do was squeeze her hand.

The aforementioned Cauldon appeared. He was the eldest Castle kid at age 24, and probably the new richest guy in the State. He glared at me, drink in hand.

“We need to talk later. So don’t pull any disappearing acts.” He said in a harsh whisper as if anyone was listening anyway.

“And you,” he said, addressing Celia, “pull yourself together. You’re embarrassing me.”

Me and Celia watch him walk away and join a group of people nearby; they each extended their hands in condolence and Caul put on his best fake grin, with just a hint of sadness in it. He was a master.

Celia and I retreated to another section of the house, free from the phony grins and the weeping family members (not including the immediate Castle clan; Caul had instructed them to remain stoic, as If they were the Royal Family or something) so we could talk. I hadn’t seen her in months. I was off at Westchester College and she had gone to Yale in Connecticut.

I wanted to tell her I was in love with her, but considering the circumstances, it wasn’t a good idea. Plus she was my step-sister.

Instead I pulled out a cigarette and shoved it in my lips, unlit.

She laughed in a kind of sad way.

“Something on my face?” I said.

“No. It’s just … I missed you. And the silly way you smoke, or don’t smoke.”

“Caul certainly didn’t miss me.” I said, sitting back on the sofa. It was rather warm in the place, plus I had on a Burberry overcoat, my late step-father’s, actually. He'd never miss it.

“Caul doesn’t miss anyone. Neither does Charles or Alexa,” she said, sipping her wine tenderly. She was holding the glass between her long fingers, like she was holding on for dear life. I found myself staring at her white nail polish - which brushed the ends of her pink fingers - and I went into a thousand-mile stare.

“I mean is it too much to ask for a little warmth around here, Daniel?” She said, placing a hand on my leg, looking me straight in the eyes. I could see she had ingested a few drinks, and who knows, Valium even. But the girl was entitled; she’d lost both her parents now and her remaining kin had all the warmth of a pile of cinder blocks.

“Where is old Charles, anyway?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s probably taking inventory of the house, making notes on what he’ll want from the estate. Classy …” she said, waving her hand, gesturing around the room.

I heard Alexa calling from away over at the doorway, breaking my trance.

“Celia! I need you. Stop sequestering yourself,” she said. She never acknowledged my presence. She just stood at that doorway glaring at Celia.

“I have to go, but we’ll talk later, okay?” said Celia. She reached over and kissed my cheek before going off with Alexa, who never bothered to look back at me.

Welcome home, Danny Bloom.
* * *

The Castle Estate was built in 1922 by Jed Castle, who was a robber baron. He was one of the original Industrial Revolutionists, and from what I’ve read a real cold son of a bitch. Walking down the hallway towards the east wing of the house, I casually studied all the family portraits; they went back a long way. The earliest was a painting of John-Smith Castle, killed in the war of 1812. He was a grim looking bastard. The whole hall was filled with these portraits of dead guys. It was fucking depressing, I tell you, but standing there in my gangly 18 year old body, unlit cigarette in mouth, and overcoat hanging, I felt like I was somehow cut from a different cloth then the great Castles of war and Industrial Revolution. I was a simple Irish kid from Boston, adopted by a kind wealthy lady, against the wishes of her family, although I don’t know what motivated the late Emily Castle to drive down to Boston to adopt a trouble-making kid from Southie in the first place, I really don’t. I missed her; she was a good woman. And may he rest in peace, but the late Nicolas Castle didn’t deserve her. But that's just my opinion.

* * *

I found myself in the old man’s den, somehow.

The place was dense with books, volumes of law texts, great big tomes of Shakespeare, everything. There was a large oak desk, where he died apparently, bent over his work. Most people would want to die with their family by their side, but not old Nick; he went the way he wanted, at his desk poring over documents, business deals, investments, whatever. 55 years old, you fucking believe that? Died alone.

“You old bastard” I muttered. My head was swimming because I had hardly ever been allowed to roam free in the house, much less wander through the old man’s private office. Behind the desk, I sat in the big old leather chair. The thing was ancient; it creaked like a bitch when I put my weight in it. Isn’t that funny? The man was almost a billionaire but he was too cheap to get himself a new chair. Did it have sentimental value? Fuck knows. Getting brave - for, who was going to burst in and stop me, the ghost of Christmas past? – I opened the top drawer of the desk. What I saw inside just took my breath away. I suppose not everything was a loss, really. I supposed that If I was going to be tossed on the street I may as well have a memento of my time with one of the richest families in New York State. They wouldn’t miss it, would they? I just hoped God wouldn't strike me down for stealing from a dead man.

Back at the reception area, I ambled over to the buffet table again hoping Celia would reappear. No such luck, instead I got Caul.

“The guests will be leaving soon, and I want you to stay put. We need to discuss some things.” he said tersely before wandering off again. An hour later everyone was gone, stuffed into their limos and making their way home, or wherever it was they were going, through the rainy October evening. I sat down on the large couch, cradling a brandy. Alcohol and Irish don’t mix, I’m told, but today I didn’t give a rat’s ass. There was something heavy coming down.

After Caul and Alexa saw the last of the mourners out, Alexa disappeared. Caul came straight over and sat down opposite me. He too had a drink in his hand.

There were a few moments of awkward silence as Caul was forming his words, I guess. He was looking into his glass, turning it with his fingers. I got the feeling that this would be bad.

“Now that my father is dead, our obligation to you as a ward of the state is fulfilled,” he began, “You are no longer considered a Castle as far as I’m concerned, or was ever concerned.”

“Can I have that in writing so you don’t retract that statement at a later date?”

“Always in jest, aren’t you Daniel? You were never a real Castle anyway.”

“You mean, because I’m not made of stone?”

“Joke if you will, but I want you out of the mansion as soon as possible.” He never said it in a mean way, just matter-of-factly.

“Where would I go?” I said in my best sarcastic voice.

“Not concerned. We’ll provide you with a small … stipend, to tide you over.”

“For all my years of faithful service you mean?”

“You’re not my brother, I owe you nothing. I’m offering you a fair deal.”

“Well, Thank you counselor.”

Breaking his façade of detachedness, Caul leaned forward and looked at me intently. I thought he was going to grab my neck and throttle me. “I don’t like you, I’ve never liked you. You mean only one thing to me, a percentage of inheritance that you don’t deserve. So the sooner you leave the better.”

“Well, What about my percentage then, of the inheritance? It’s possible Mister Castle cut me in, isn’t it?”

“It’s possible, but highly unlikely to be a significant amount, given that you were a ward of the state.”

He said it like I was a dog picked up from the pound or something.

Alexa walked in. She had a glass of something, Port maybe, hanging from her fingers, and she glided past us.

“Oh Caul, leave the boy alone. Stop being so uppity.”

“Keep out of this, Alexa.”

I sighed and pulled out a cigarette. I usually only keep one in my mouth for a few minutes before I toss it; they tend to get wet and soggy.

“You can’t smoke in here.” Said Caul.

He said this knowing I’d never actually lit a cigarette in my life, except when I was at St. Sebastian’s Children’s Home, and that was a long time ago. 500 Mondays ago, really. This wasn’t about the cigarette; he was projecting his anger at me. There was something else about me that he resented and for the life of me I couldn’t figure it out.

It was as If all of Caul’s energy had drained, because he just got up and waved a hand at me.

“Just – be gone by morning. If you stand to inherit something our lawyers will track you down.”

And that was that.

I went up to Celia’s room, to say goodbye. She had drunk herself into a fitful sleep. I couldn’t rouse her, except for a few mumbles. I kissed her on the cheek and said goodbye.

It was still drizzling a little when I stepped outside; it was a bloody miserable evening. I made my way over to the car port where the old man had his collection of classic automobiles. I just got thrown out again, I thought. Was it me? was it them? Why did nobody want me?

I tried a few of the keys on my ring, and one of them opened the little door on the side of the car port. It was dark and gloomy in there, so I turned on the overhead light and wandered around, looking at all the cars, wondering where I was gonna go. My only option was to go back to the dorm at Westchester, really, but I felt frozen in place, like I just got kicked in the stomach. I was an orphan all over again.

I saw what I had come for.

There, at the end of the row, near the key cabinet, was the old man’s favorite car; a ratty old 69 Porsche. It was my favorite too. In fact, Mister Castle used to take me out in it, when he was drunk, and try to teach me how to drive stick shift. He used to wake me up in the middle of the night, the old bastard, and he used to make me drive him around the estate, and once or twice out onto the streets of Westchester County. I had no license, but who was I to argue about it? Sometimes the old bastard would reveal his secret philosophies on life to me - he called them Castles Laws – and then he’d fall asleep in the passenger seat a lot of the time.

“Never show your true feelings.” He’d mumble. “That’s rule number one. Feelings equal weakness, remember that.” Then he’d doze off. I couldn’t move him; he outweighed me by a good 90 pounds or so. I’d usually fetch a blanket from the house for him, cover him up.

Those were the only times I ever felt an affinity for the old bastard. He was as lonely in this world as I was.

* * *

I guess I had been lost in my reverie, running my hand on the fender of that Porsche, because I didn’t see Charles standing there; he must have followed me to the car port. He scared the hell out of me.

“Nice ride, dad’s favorite. Too bad you won’t ever get to drive it, eh sporto?” he said, slapping me on the back. He was still dressed in his funeral tux, but with the tie gone and his top collar unbuttoned.

I wanted to smack him in his fat over-stuffed face. But I said nothing. I smiled amiably.

“Yeah, the old man probably left it to you, in a grand under-sight I might add.”

“Yeah, he better have, or I’ll have to contest the will,” he said absently, “But I can’t seem to find the keys for it.”

I shrugged. He went over to the large cabinet hanging on the garage wall and opened it – inside were dozens of keys to all the old man’s cars – but there was one spot missing, and that was the Porsche.

“damn it – the Porsche keys are missing,” He said.

“Did you check the old man’s pockets?”

“That’s not funny. If you’ve got those keys, hand them over.”

I quickly frisked myself, even hung out the linings of my pockets.

“You always were a sneak. Where’d you put them?” Chuck wondered out loud. He looked around, as If they'd just materialize in front of him somehow.

“Who cares about the car, your father’s dead.” I muttered, but Chuck didn’t give a shit. All he cared about was his inheritance and that stupid Porsche, like he couldn’t go out and buy a dozen of them.

Chuck finally stopped his futile search, and just glared at me as If something just dawned in that dim brain of his.

“Why are you wearing my father’s coat, you thief! Take it off this instant.”

He shoved me, but I didn’t shove back. Instead I went for the jugular.

“If you let me keep the coat, I won’t tell anyone about you and Jimmy Gregor.”

Charlies face went gray. Idiot – his reaction confirmed my hunch. Not that I cared about Charles Edwin Castles’ sexual orientation, but I couldn’t let him take the coat, no matter how nasty It had to get.

“You haven’t heard the last of this.” He said in a hoarse voice, then he brushed past me and left. I felt bad about it; Charles was an okay guy, from a distance, and, truthfully, I would never have told a soul about his indiscretion. Sometimes you had to play hard ball, that’s all.

I sighed deeply, and then stuck my hands in the pockets of my Burberry. I closed my hands around the Porsche keys and pulled them out once I knew Charles was really gone. I walked over to the driver’s side door and opened it, and got in. I put the keys in the ignition, and turned it to the ACC position, and the dashboard came to life. There was still half tank of gas in the sucker, and the radio was tuned to a Jazz station.

Thoughts were racing through my head; Who am I? Where do I belong? Existential thoughts that have plagued man for centuries, philosophical blockbusters that couldn't be solved before dinner time; things I needed to figure out before it was too late. Absolution for Danny Bloom, whatever that meant.

I saw the remote garage door opener on the dash, and pushed the button on it. The large wooden door suddenly creaked and jangled, and started to rise, revealing a dark and stormy scene out of an Edgar Allen Poe novel, the rain pouring down in curtains and drapes and reams; an abyss of unknown origin.

I turned the engine over, and eased the car out into the storm.

2010-10-30T13:46:00.011-04:00

Into the NaNoWriMo Fray!

I’m one of those writers who will catch on to things either too early or too late. In the case of NaNoWriMo (which sounds like gibberish to the uninitiated, but actually means National Novel Writing Month) I had largely ignored it until this year. The thinking was, ‘do I need a writing event to actually get something written’, and the answer is no. However, there is an intangible here; being left out of something so fun just sucks. How can a real writer ignore all the scribbling going on? Who can resist a challenge of writing 50,000 words, or 175 pages, in a month? I guess it’s all about being part of something, it’s about the experience, isn’t it? Besides, I was bombarded with people talking about the damn thing and I guess I’m weak-willed.

So I shall jump into the fray, food and rest be damned, and I will attempt my 1666 words a day (yes, I worked it out, do you mind?) and see what happens.

Scrabble! I Capitulate …

I got my ass kicked at Scrabble.

That’s not an easy admission; I pride myself on being a wordsmith, but the other night I was thoroughly trashed by my family at a get together. I mean, I came in DEAD LAST! Ego bruised, I sulked for a while, wondering how this could happen to a writer. I have a large vocabulary! I’m intelligent! What’s the deal?

The cold fact is, Scrabble is not writing. A lot of factors come into play:

You have spelled out the word Exhaled with the letters on your little plastic Scrabble Tile holder, waiting for the three goofs ahead of you to take their turn (and they are excruciatingly slow) and you KNOW someone’s gonna take the exact spot you need to get 110 points. They take the spot, and score 110 points.

Sometimes you can’t spell anything with I I I E E E A

No less a complex action than plopping two letters down precisely at the crux of two existing words thereby yielding points from the now three words is quashed when a Q abuts a P rendering the whole operation void.

Generally I suck at anagrams, which is the basis of Scrabble. The letters W G S A A R O are hieroglyphs to me unless I really concentrate … (Gas? Wags? Grows? Swag? Wroaags?)

Panic: Sure I can spell HAT and SPOT with my letters and settle for 3 points, but panic over my low score leads me to obsess and go all Captain Ahab in search of the perfect word which will lead me to Scrabble Nirvana: Triple Word score! So I sit and concentrate on those lovely blue spots on the Scrabble board … points! Victory! Huzzah! I lose! (Plus, when I do get a chance at a triple word tile, I only have the word HAT to place on it)

Playing with people who have a repository of ridiculously obscure words can only cause heartburn and paper cuts as I peruse the scrabble dictionary at a lightning fast pace in order to quash the word WELK that the guy ahead of me puts down between two other words and on top of a triple word score. He says it’s a fish. I say it’s a dead band leader’s name and is inadmissible. He wins.

When in doubt use the word Qwijibo: meaning ‘A fat, dumb, balding, North American ape with a short temper’ while no one is looking.

After I’ve been staring at a triple word score square for a few turns, I get ready to place my word Xenon on it, thereby netting me the bragging rights to the title of Unquestioned Lord and Master of the Scrabble Universe, only to have the guy ahead of me place the word HAT in my spot.

More NaNoWriMo stuff …

Okay, here is the info for National Novel Writing Month, Thirty Days and Nights of Literary Abandon …

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Okay, gotta go. It’s scribble time (Not Scrabble, Scribble. Ugh …) Lemme know about your NaNo adventures. Keep in touch, and remember, you gotta just Shut Up and Write and everything will be alright.

Note: Don't forget to check out the Campfire Halloween Special; lotsa creepy stories submitted by some good friends of mine, along with some time-honored classics of horror ...