It is just after midnight. A new year. Leaning out the window, I notice that the air in the alley smells the same as last year. Looking up into the black sky, the fireworks diminished and the stars blotted blind by the city lights, I realize that this year will not feel real until theContinue reading “Small stone #1”
Tag Archives: writing
A Writer’s Notebook: a reading meme
Okay, this is perhaps cheating slightly, because a meme is hardly a writing exercise, right? Except that it is. I’ll explain more below, but for now, let’s call this a review of my influences. I should also preëmptively explain that this meme is made rather tricky because I have to qualify my answers: When itContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: a reading meme”
Writing the year away: My year in words and numbers
This year has been the first full calendar year that I’ve spent focused exclusively on writing. I’ve actually been doing this since summer 2009, and though I’ll still be exclusively writing in spring 2011, I’m anxious to get back into the classroom (I miss students and the intellectual discourse of academia!). But in terms ofContinue reading “Writing the year away: My year in words and numbers”
A Writer’s Notebook: a love story
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”
New Writer’s Notebook posts
Okay, as promised, I’ve caught up with the Writer’s Notebook, and with two really fun entries. (They were fun to write, anyway. I’ll let you decide if they were worth the wait.) Also as promised, I’ve backdated them to fit where they belong, so you can find the first entry on December 3 and theContinue reading “New Writer’s Notebook posts”
Bad Writing
Point me to the advance ticket sales, please! Dan Chaon posted this on his Facebook page, which is where I found it. Sounds like a fantastic (and potentially depressing) jaunt into cold, blinding reality. A bit like “the Bulwer-Lytton contest meets 90% of all graduate writing workshops.” Which is exactly how I’d have pitched this.Continue reading “Bad Writing”
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”
NaNoWriMo Conclusion
Well, it’s official: I’ve “won” NaNoWriMo,” with a final word count of 51,879 words. Fewer than last year, but many more to come if I expect to finish the story itself. Still, I’m glad to be finished with this frenzied marathon, because the whole experience has, as per last year, energized my writing, and I’mContinue reading “NaNoWriMo Conclusion”
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”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 