It’s been a rough week. It’s been finals week, and I have five classes that I am responsible for. That went relatively smoothly, but there’s a lot of work grading and making sure the final grade is truly representative of what I think the student’s effort deserves. Then I’ve had a magazine to put to … More Physician, Heal Thyself
Writing stories is a funny business. Editing and evaluating them is too. It’s not simply a matter of dealing with what’s in front of you. You have to read people’s minds in many cases. I spent ten years as a book and magazine editor, and I got pretty good at evaluating manuscripts. And I knew … More Don’t Shoot the Messenger
This is the second year that the Rough Writers and I have followed our tradition—that’s the one where I take everyone to Sonic at our last meeting of the school year and treat everyone to root beer floats. I say root beer, but we’ve never been a group for homogeneity, and so I suspect some … More Bittersweet Chocolate
The last blog I wrote talked about my goals for the summer. One of the big ones is writing my first screenplay. This is in anticipation of teaching a class this fall entitled “Drama Writing.” I figured that I would start by reading one of my textbooks and visualizing how I would write my chosen … More This Just In: I’m a Chicken
Just a quick blog today. I just completed writing my last final exam for this school year. That doesn’t mean all of my work for the semester is over with. I still have lectures to give, presentations to evaluate, lots of grading to do. What it does signify is another step toward freeing up my … More Rolling Toward the Finish Line
As I have mentioned here many times before, I’m teaching a Narrative Writing class this semester that is presently winding down. In addition to requiring students to write the first 50 pages of a novel as well as the outline, they will have an essay final. One of the questions on the final I have … More Can you believe it?
Statistically speaking, I doubt there are more than a thousand or two successful full-time writers out there in the U.S. I heard a statistic once upon a time a long, long time ago that there were only a few hundred. But a lot of that depends on what one considers “successful,” I would guess. From … More Mind Games 7: The Writer’s Jekyll and Hyde
I am teaching a class called Drama Writing this fall, and once again it will be a first for me. I will be teaching both stage writing and screenwriting in that class. Today I had the opportunity to read through the introduction of my textbook for stage writing. The author tells of a rejection slip … More Compelling Evidence
Maybe the title is a little bit misleading. Maybe not. I am one of those people who love–absolutely love–the creative process of writing. I enjoy the ability to create characters and even worlds that did not exist before I created them. I love spending time with these characters during the writing process. And I am … More Bad Medicine
I’ve always been a square peg in a round hole. When I was in elementary school and high school, I was one of the outsiders. (Of course, I have learned since then that pretty much everyone considers themselves an outsider when it comes to high school.) I had creative tendencies back then, but being a … More Underground Novelist
The Great Adventure 