The scenes below are from a story I’ve been working on for a long, long while. It’s on my computer in a folder labeled “TO FINISH THIS FALL.” Sadly, winter is just around the corner and the end of the year just a few weeks away, and I doubt I’ll find a satisfactory ending toContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: a love story”
Category Archives: Writer's Notebook
A Writer’s Notebook: found message
No intro this week. Just the story, and then, below, the exercise. The first things he did when he got home from work was shuck his coat and pull a beer from the fridge. It was cold and wet outside, the rain thin but icy, the kind that freezes in your hair and stabs downContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: found message”
A Writer’s Notebook: HerInteractive story
So, as I wrote a while ago, HerInteractive is sponsoring a story contest, and I decided to play along. This isn’t a story I’d submit (for one thing, it isn’t finished; for another, I broke the rules), but here’s what I’ve done so far with the instructions for the contest. Isn’t it marvelous to beContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: HerInteractive story”
A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo update #4
So, as promised, I’ve been tinkering a bit with the book since I returned from vacation, even adding some new scenes, but I haven’t updated the word count because most of the new text is still in my voice recorder and most of the changes have been internal, meaning that part of the word countContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo update #4”
A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo update #3
Well, it’s (un)official: Last Saturday, after two marathon writing sessions and just one day after last week’s update, I passed the 50,000-word goal. That’s seventeen days early, and two days earlier than I crossed the finish line last year. It feels epic. And it happened right on time, too, because I spent the day afterContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo update #3”
A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo update #2
This week I’m just posting one long section from my NaNoWrimo novel. I’ve been writing all over the place this week, but I’ve finally gotten into the meat (or the blood?) of the story concept, and this passage–a bit expository, I know–sort of encapsulates that concept. (Plus it’s a nice glimpse of how fringe-nutty myContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo update #2”
A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo update #1
Today, I am five days into NaNoWriMo. My current official word count (not counting the writing I’ve already done today) is 13,666 words, with an average of 3,416.5 words per day. This is a pretty frenetic pace, really, and I don’t expect to keep it up throughout the month (yesterday, for example, I actually wroteContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo update #1”
A Writer’s Notebook: Found poem (from Nizar Qabbani)
I’m in Dubai this weekend, visiting friends. Yesterday, I spent part of my day on the Dubai campus of Zayed University, where, in a hallway leading to the campus library, I found a row of large, framed prints, each bearing–in Arabic and in English–lines of poetry. The lines all come from existing poetry, but theyContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Found poem (from Nizar Qabbani)”
A Writer’s Notebook: My nephew’s assignment
Yesterday, my sister sent me an e-mail which contained a story my nephew Aidan had written. His story was about a string, and it reminded me of my own string story, which I began to write for my nephew. And then–because Aidan’s story was a school writing assignment–I realized this would make an excellent Writer’sContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: My nephew’s assignment”
A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo outline
This is perhaps a bit early — National Novel Writing Month is still two weeks away — but I’ve had this project (and vampires in general) on the brain lately, so I figured I might as well get started. (SPOILER ALERT: If anyone feels like following along with my progress on this book during NaNoWriMo, skipContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo outline”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 