freddyfoon

So, in spite of the fact that I'm replotting, I've decided to keep posting the excerpts that I have, in hopes of keeping things interested. Twice a week seems a bit often for my musings on the fictioneer's craft, especially for me, who has to come up with said musings. I'll be mostly culling bits from the main plot line, since it looks like the subplot is going to be torn down and rebuilt. Anyway, if you need catching up, check out "It Pays to be an English Major." Here we go... Colin scrambled out from underneath the briars on the patch's far side, sliced in a hundred places but glad to be alive. Or whatever it is I am, he thought. He cou

It's the writer's mind and heart in which written works are grown to maturity. Nowhere else does every single element needed to produce the end result come together.  It's as if our mind/heart, or brains/guts if you like, is a field in which the seed of an idea can be planted and then nourished by time, craft and often the help of our colleagues. It's stressful, being a field. You have to manage all that nourishment coming in so it gets properly onto the page, while at the same time your inner resources are getting pulled out by the very thing you're trying to create. And like a field, if you don't have a rest period from time to time, you b

One thing I have to remind myself every time I sit down at the keyboard to story-tell is: "The Writing Police have left the universe," or "the Writing Police have lost their funding," or "the Writing Police have all quit to become ski instructors in Vail," or something even sillier. The point is, there are no Writing Police anymore, and, in fact, there never were any. Nobody is going to come haul you away in irons if your writing is lousy. I find this a great comfort on those days I'm confident every word or combination thereof I am putting down is trash–which is pretty much every day. Once I remind myself that the Writing Police are a