the dark age
A little book
In March, when I finished major work on the third draft of my in-progress novel, The Dark Age, I printed a copy, then set it aside to breathe a bit. I'd always intended this novel to be a slender little affair, and it very much isn't that. I don't think
For every novel, a font of its own
I've been a designer for nearly as long as I've been a writer, and there's little I love more than a great font. Which is why it can be painful to encounter manuscript submission guidelines that require something like 12pt double-spaced Courier or Times New Roman. Don't get me wrong,
Neither here nor there
* To my amazement, waking early, then doing a medium amount of work on Project A, then a small amount of work on Project B, seems to be working. (On weekends I do a large amount of Project A, and stick with small amounts on Project B.) * Sea of Tranquility [https:
Leaving a little want-to
I've just spent the weekend putting miles on my keyboard. My hands don't hurt, but they've gotten clumsy. More and more words came out with transposed letters. My word count plummeted. I developed a headache from all of the screen-staring. There haven't been many happy writing stretches in the last
Dear Mrs. Gruhn
Recently I received a letter in the mail from my high school creative writing teacher, Mrs. Gruhn. We've been in touch here and there the last few years, but it's been a little while since the last time. In the letter, she hoped my writing was going well, and that
The books on my desk
A couple of years ago, taking a cue from Austin Kleon [http://fromyourdesks.com/2011/05/19/austin-kleon/], I squeezed a second desk into my study. In Steal Like an Artist, Kleon wrote: > I have two desks in my office—one is “analog” and one is “digital.” The analog desk
Quotation marks
There's something wonderful about a story that dispenses with quotation marks. As I mentioned before, I've just finished In the Quick [https://amzn.to/3sf5N7I] , by Kate Hope Day. Not a quotation mark to be found in Day's novel. Cormac McCarthy's The Road [https://amzn.to/3soIN6b], Kent Haruf's Plainsong
Little novels
I've just finished reading In the Quick [https://amzn.to/3fYG8ez], by Kate Hope Day. It's a slim novel, with fifty-three chapters, many of them quite short. Some of my favorite novels over the last two years have been "little" books. Jenny Offill's The Dept. of Speculation [https://amzn.to/