blog
An archive of all my public posts.
Write Like A Boss: How to Establish Narrative Authority and Gain the Reader’s Trust
This essay is a summary of the points made in my recent Write Naked, Die Famous Podcast on the topic of Beginnings. Use this article as a reference. Listen here: To write a great beginning that will keep the reader engaged, we’ve got to do three things: grab their attention, hook them with a promise and convince them that this story is the one they need to read. Convincing them takes a combination of persuasion and authority. Once we have their attention, enticing them with a promise is part of the persuasion — if the hook promises a payoff they are interested in, access to special information, a thrilling suspense,…
Mastering “The Hook” in Your Writing
This essay is a summary of the points made in my recent Write Naked, Die Famous Podcast on the topic of Beginnings. Use this article as a reference. Listen here. Many of us think we can measure success in writing by sales, but any number of factors can impact your book sales that don’t have to do with your writing. You are a writer. Your job as a writer is not to sell units of books — that’s the job of the publisher and the bookstore. Your job as a writer is to keep the reader reading. Keep her reading the next word, sentence, page, and chapter despite all the…
Are You Brainstorming or Beginning? Where Does Writing Start?
This essay is a summary of the points made in my recent Write Naked, Die Famous Podcast on the topic of Beginnings. Use this article as a reference. Listen here: Writing is hard work but for most of us, it’s also fulfilling work. Whether you write fiction, poetry or non-fiction, writing comes from a creative spark that ignites a fire within us to express this idea through writing and, for many, to share this idea with others. The struggle many have with writing isn’t just the discomfort in revealing their ideas or vulnerabilities or in exploring the dark and frightening parts of their psyches with the world, the hardest part…
Four Ways to Grab the Reader’s Attention in the First Sentence
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t grab your reader in the first sentence, you could miss it. This essay is a summary of the points made in my recent Write Naked, Die Famous Podcast on the topic of Beginnings. Use this article as a reference. Listen here. There are so many things competing for our attention it’s even hard to focus on the important things, it’s hard to stay on task. We are easily distracted and hard pressed to really focus on something. With fast-paced TV shows, high tech movies and the scandal, drama and salacious content in bite-sized portions on social media, how are we, as novelists, supposed to…
Talking Schitt About Small Towns – Schitts Creek
Yesterday I caught the tail end of a show on NPR about Schitt Creek, a show on Amazon about a couple who lose everything and have to move to a town they bought as a joke called Schitt Creek to rebuild their lives. That gives you an idea of how much their lives have changed if they are moving to a town they bought on a whim, as a gag, to rebuild. It’s a riches to rags story. I haven’t seen the show although it sounds good and I want to watch it, but listening to the conversation about it on NPR made me really think about some assumptions in…
Book Review: The Art of Fiction by James Salter
James Salter is one of my favorite writers. His book “A Sport and a Pastime” was one of the most beautiful, evocative and memorable books I’ve read in my life. The simplicity of his language betrays the emotional complexity of his stories and characters. This book was taken from lectures he gave to writing students and so the tone is as if he is speaking to us, personally, about his love of writing. He writes about his successes in writing and his failures, notably the poor reaction and bad reviews of his memoir Burning the Days. The book is short but packed with great details about his own writing as…
How Pat Conroy Uses Dialogue to Reveal Character in Prince of Tides
Before I started writing stories and essays, I wrote plays. This was more of a happy accident than anything planned. I loved theatre and loved being in plays, but my performances were hit or miss. Some days, I was full of energy and confidence and would belt out songs in musicals as if I were destined to be Annie on Broadway. I played Charlie Brown in a musical at summer camp and had a lead in the musical “Bells Are Ringing” in middle school. After school, I went to the Pittsburgh Playhouse and studied drama and theatre hoping to ride my success as Chuck into a high school theatre career,…
Stress is a Choice
I went to college on the other side of the country from where I lived. It was a nine hour trip, with two layovers, not including travel to and from the airport. I went alone, sight unseen other than the catalog. I had an independent spirit then, just as I do now. I don’t remember the trip being hard, I remember it being exciting. But I do remember being worried that the cab driver who brought me from the airport to campus would take me to the wrong college and I wouldn’t realize because I’d never visited. Everything turned out fine. I got dropped off at the correct college, found…
Meeting Walter Kirn
The first time I met Walter Kirn was in the late 90s. When I met him again last year, I didn't expect that it would result in an adventure with Harper's Magazine!
Shouting Out Great Content!
Good morning! It’s the last day of my vacation. I’ve had a fabulous time with family in Boston and then New Hampshire for two weeks. We’ve had great food, gone on hikes, been zip lining, toured caves, cooked together, laughed together, road tripped together and the younger generation all took a week of science camp together. This is very special to me because I live so far from family so it’s like moving planets to get everyone together.In addition to all the fun activities, I’ve also had some down time to read and listen to some podcasts and I want to introduce you to a few gems I’ve discovered. I…
