Here’s my first go at writing a slow poem: Age Twelve, Sharing a Room With Grammy When you’re old, your hands and feet are blocks of wood. She sits slowly, easing down over calcified knees. Her bent index finger is a post to wrap a shoelace on muscle memory ties the bow, certainly not the …
Category Archive: Technique
Jul 30
Friday Internet Candy
I am at heart a novelist. In part this is because I suspect I do not always wield the razor edge of language necessary for poetry, say, or short stories which will be read over and over. I get my kicks in dealing with bigger stuff: plot, character, and idea. Nevertheless, I found the following …
Feb 25
Link of the moment
So, this article from The Guardian cracked me up: Writers’ Top Rules for Writing Fiction They are diverse in style and content, everything from Richard Ford’s, “Marry someone who loves you who thinks you becoming a writer is a good idea” and “Don’t have children,” to Elmore Leonard’s “Using adverbs is mortal sin,” to Margaret …
Jan 16
Scene vs. Summary
One of the basic tricks in a writer’s Bag-O-Tricks is knowing when to use scene, and when to use summary. What the crap does that mean? Well, scene is like a movie: the events are happening in real time, you’re watching them, there we go. It may or may not involve direct dialogue. For example: …