A man was walking along, deep in thought, lost in worries about this and that and another thing, when suddenly he realized he had stumbled into a wonderland. Everything was bright colors and magic buses and this can’t be real, but it was real enough and whimsically nonsensical. “You there!” cried a friendly enough lookingContinue reading “The man who crossed Whimsy Avenue”
Category Archives: Creativity
Making up the rules
What are the rules? While we sleep, and when we leave the room, the toys are alive. They laugh and play and have lives, but the instant a human enters they must drop where they are like a misplaced toy. Pixar has a billion-dollar franchise based on that concept, with its four Toy Story movies,Continue reading “Making up the rules”
Smacked in the face while getting by
I’m re-reading The Write Attitude by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a collection of blog posts she wrote about the difference between a professional writer and a wannabe writer. Chapter 4, “Getting By,” smacked me in the face, in a good way. She writes about a job, early in her career, where she found she was ableContinue reading “Smacked in the face while getting by”
AI joins my marketing team
The next project in my “Roger Mifflin Collection” series is an edition of The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, of which Mr. Mifflin said, “If your mind needs a tonic of iron and wine, and a thorough rough-and-tumbling, try Samuel Butler’s ‘Notebooks’ or ‘The Man Who Was Thursday,’ by Chesterton.” Having already tumbled my mind withContinue reading “AI joins my marketing team”
In which I back up the Jeep
So — Have you noticed how often people start telling a story with the word “so”? Do people realize the word isn’t necessary? So I moved the scenes that I’ve deleted (for now) from Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus to a separate place outside the main manuscript (It’s easy to do stuffContinue reading “In which I back up the Jeep”
Daring to dream on a cold, windy day
I have always needed to create. Our father took scrap paper home from work, with dittoed or mimeographed stuff on one side, and we drew and wrote on the blank side. Comic books, songs, maps of imaginary countries — when I had a blank in front of me, I felt I had to fill itContinue reading “Daring to dream on a cold, windy day”
Tap the wells of passion
Write what you love, the teacher says. Write what you know. That’s good advice as far as it goes. Something can also be said about writing what you hate. Andrea Latzko went to the Great War and came back broken, physically, mentally and spiritually. His Men in War is harrowing a century later. Dalton TrumboContinue reading “Tap the wells of passion”