Topic Tuesday III: At World's End

Arrrrrr! Me hearties... time for a themed Topic Tuesday... now get back to work or I'll have ye swabbin' the poop deck...

• Scallywag
• Blow the man down
• Broadside
• Booty
• Rope's end
• skull-and-crossbones

Check out the definitions of these terms and more or I'll send ye to the hempen halter. Arrrrr!
http://homepage.mac.com/crabola/PirateGlossary/Menu22.html

Provocative Phrase Friday Strikes Back

With a thirst for vengeance, we present these phrases to you...

• And yet only in the...
• And just like that...
• He kicked through the wall...
• It's fatal...
• But it's not as big...
• All through your life...

Topic Tuesday 2: Electric Boogaloo

Maybe this has been voted one of the worst sequels ever... or maybe not... but isn't the word "Boogaloo" just fun to say?

• The value of
• Pop-cultural sensation
• Triggers
• The whole forest
• No longer talk about
• Spellbinding

Provocative Phrase Friday: A New Hope

A new hope that I'll actually keep up with posting new phrases every Friday... wish me luck...

• You've never seen it...
• I was just hoping...
• We'll work with you...
• So, the sooner you start...
• It was hard leaving...
• The thief also ignored...

The Return of the Topic Tuesday

We're back... Try these on for size:

• Riveting
• Assassin
• Teenagers
• Shed some light
• Planning for "if"
• Hollywood

Dan Simmons on Writing Well

Last week I listened to Kasey Kovar’s http://www.kaceykowarsshow.com/ interview with Dan Simmons, one of my favorite authors. Simply put: He is brilliant. He writes across all genres. Science fiction: the Hyperion Cantos, the series of Nebula and Hugo award winning books. His first book, The Song of Kali won the World Fantasy Award. Let’s not forget his horror fiction. Carrion Comfort and Summer of Night are books that Stephen King wished he wrote. He also put the “hard” into hard-boiled detective fiction with his Joe Kurtz novels: Hardcase, Hard Freeze and Hard as Nails.

As a former gifted English teacher, he is well-read and is not afraid to use the entire range of world literature and history as both inspiration for and as part of the story itself. His latest effort is The Terror, a blend of historical and horror fiction based on the ill-fated Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin in 1845. If you haven’t read any of his work before, do it now. Simmons work will be read alongside of classic literature in the decades and centuries in the future.

On his website, he has a series of articles on writing that are must-reads: Writing Well. They are long, dense and packed with great insights on his writing process and good advice about the back-breaking mental work of writing. Check them out at: http://www.dansimmons.com/writing_welll/archive/writing_index.htm

Walter Mosley's Address

Saw Walter Mosley’s keynote address at the Columbus State Community College Writers Conference this evening. I sat next to Gail, one of my all time favorite students, who I haven’t seen in a while and we listened to Mr. Mosley speak. He said that you simply must write every day, 7 days a week, 90 minutes a day. If you don’t feel like writing or nothing comes, sit there until it does. He writes three hours a day when he first gets up in the morning. This seems to be the most consistent habit of all successful writers: to write every single day of the week, preferably on a regular schedule, at the same time every day (usually first thing in the morning) at a time when you are at your best.

Gail told me afterwards that I should be proud that I am teaching the techniques that successful, best-selling authors use every day. That too much education can get in the way of telling a good story. (Fact: Homer was blind and illiterate.) That writing is done largely in the unconscious mind and all a writer has to do is transcribe what it tells you, but you need to be sitting there at the appointed time to hear what it has to say. That showing is almost always better than telling. That too many people get hung up on the things that they don’t know or don’t think that they know, such as grammar or spelling, or how to do some sort of technical thing correctly. It is almost always total bunk. Excuses for not getting your ass in the chair and getting back to work.

I forget to practice what I preach sometimes. Time for me to remember.