Category: Blog/News
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Shield by nibble
I’m continuing Monday through Saturday on my new novel, HLP, writing a chapter a day, still without an outline, just growing it as we go. Since I began writing queries in April, I have done about a hundred of them, mostly to literary agents and a few to publishers who accept proposals directly. Yesterday, I…
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Rolling along or slapping out
This author [me] is eighteen writing days into HLP, eighteen chapters at more than 20,000 words. This week has had some hard writing days keeping up my one-chapter-per-day goal. Homer is setting up a one-man pizzaria. He is able to purchase two essential used items at auction for almost nothing. However, I can’t just write,…
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HLP week one
I began HLP Monday and have written six chapters (each one three or four drafts), one each day, almost 7000 words. I have begun with an idea–the common good–and a business idea–HLP–and have already met quite a few surprises along the way. Homer’s sister, nickname Poppy, was the first. What do you think? One The…
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HLP
HLP. That’s the name of the novel I’ll begin on Monday. This story’s root began about five years ago as a business idea, but not one I could pursue myself and I don’t know anyone who would want to pursue it, even though I still think it is a great idea, a way-of-life idea. Toward…
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This Boy’s Life
Tomorrow, August 1, 2026, I will finish Ordinary Life. I have about twenty pages left to proofread. This will be the fifth draft. Then, I will start developing the marketing materials necessary for querying literary agents. So, what does a writer do all day? When we lived in L.A. and I was still madly in…
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Foreshadowing, personification & symbolism
After completing the second draft of “Ordinary Life,” I spent two days mapping the manuscript for objects and ideas. Examples of objects are locks, Half Dome, and postcards. Examples of ideas are the virtue of courage, truth vs. lies, and having children. By ideas, I don’t mean the ideas I hoped to invisibly incarnate in…
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Ordinary Life – Chapter i
To my four subscribers (you might be the first of four million), here is the first chapter. I’d love to hear your reactions as readers, including what you have learned about Lenny or or things you felt. i Outside his back door, the air was cool against Lenny’s face and arms. Summer coastal overcast usually…
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Finished and beginning again
Yesterday I surprised myself by completing the first draft of the new novel I am calling “Ordinary Life.” I think that title will stick. I know speed is not related to quality, but I was able to write at least three drafts of each of the sixty-three chapters, over almost 56,000 words, in forty-one days…
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No thesis statements allowed
As a writer of non-fiction and a teacher of expository of writing, especially writing about fiction, I believe in thesis statements, have thought a lot about how to write them, and tried to teach high school students to do the same. A thesis statement in the context of a literary essay is a claim about…
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First Date
My days, twenty-three days and twenty-seven chapters into this novel, are settling into a routine which I hope I can maintain. At 25,000 words, I am perhaps one-third of the way through the first draft (each first draft chapter is written and rewritten and then polished). I mentioned last time that I began each daily…