Author Archives: Samuel Snoek-Brown

A Writer’s Notebook: Scene or short-short?

Sometimes you just write. This is what I wrote. There is no particular exercise, but I’ll explain below where this comes from. He didn’t mow the hay field, or rake it into rows or bale it into the wide wheels, bound in plastic, that baked in the sun now. But he owned the aftermath, theContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Scene or short-short?”

Floods in Pakistan and Afghanistan

I’m reading news of the massive, tragic flooding in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  I’ve posted in this blog before about terrifying natural distasters (though with the way we’ve altered our environment and the weather patterns of this planet, I wonder how long it’ll be before we stop calling these “natural” disasters), but I’ve missed posting aboutContinue reading “Floods in Pakistan and Afghanistan”

A Writer’s Notebook: The great outdoors

This is a fairly old-school, simple exercise, but it’s one I keep returning to again and again.  But as usual, more on that below. I’ve never seen the skies in other vast states, like, say, Wyoming or Montana, but I’ve seen skies in California, skies in New York, skies in Wisconsin and Florida. And itContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: The great outdoors”

Accruing the karma

If you’re as big a fan of Literary Rejections on Display as I am, you’ve probably been following with some excitement the unfolding good news for our anonymous blogger:  Over the last several weeks, he/she has been getting not just a nibble but a hard tug on the line for a novel she/he has beenContinue reading “Accruing the karma”

The short and long of things….

I just received an e-mail telling me one of my short stories made the shortlist for finalists in the short-story category of the Faulkner Wisdom Competition (run by Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society down in New Orleans).  Then, immediately after that, I received another e-mail that I made the semi-finals for the novella category of theContinue reading “The short and long of things….”

A Writer’s Notebook: Word association

This exercise requires a quick explanation up front, but I’ll explain where it comes from and what I’m doing with it below. The prompt itself is this: Brainstorm or free write around one or all of the following words: glass, willow, tile, edge, ring. Few of the houses have glass, because the scale is smallContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Word association”