Daily Journal

The Journal: Pure Writing Into the Dark

In today’s Journal * Welcome * I’m Back! * Topic: Pure Writing Into the Dark First, welcome to r2zajac and any other recent new subscribers. You picked a good time to drop in. (grin) I’m Back! I’m not bragging here folks. I’m celebrating. I just felt like sharing this good news with my friends. Starting Blackwell Ops 8, my current novel, has been nothing short of restarting my life as a fiction writer after a very long 10 months. I’ve written five or six different openings for this novel, and I struggled with all of them. It was like pulling … Read more

The Journal: The Squeaky Stair Technique

In today’s Journal * Topic: The Squeaky Stair Technique * Of Interest Topic: The Squeaky Stair Technique I’ve long wanted to write a topic about pulling the reader into the story quickly and more deeply by focusing down. That is, writing some small thing that causes the reader or viewer to focus his or her attention down on a fine detail. Doing so causes the reader to lean more closely (or deeply) into the story. In fact, I recommend you use this technique in literally every opening you ever write. The point of a good opening is to ground the … Read more

The Journal: Very Short Post Today

In today’s Journal * Very Short Post Today * Should One Seek A Critique? * Of Interest Very Short Post Today Just not a lot to say, and I’m aware that a lot of the stuff inside the recent topics has been negative. I want to get away from that for awhile. Also, the novel’s coming along, but very slowly. I put down fewer than 500 words yesterday, so I didn’t bother updating the numbers. I feel the novel is (I’m) on the verge of breaking out, but it’s (I’m) not quite there yet. As you might imagine, critical mind’s … Read more

The Journal: The Lessons We Learn

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Topic: The Lessons We Learn (a guest post) * Thanks, and guest posts * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “[I]f the market [target audience] determines what works, … what good is a critique in advance?” Matt Perryman “Creating the impression that copywriters need critiques is lucrative business.” Matt Perryman Topic: The Lessons We Learn a guest post by Matt Perryman I wanted to relate an anecdote that relates to your post on crawling befor you walk. Your post made me laugh because it’s not limited to fiction writers. In my … Read more

The Journal: When You Outline a Novel

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Topic: When You Outline a Novel * Of Interest Quote of the Day One more note for Memorial Day: “… If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.” from “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, a poet and British soldier who was … Read more

The Journal: Crawl Before You Walk

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Memorial Day * Topic: Crawl Before You Walk * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “[W]e writers are great with imagination, yet we don’t know enough about licensing and copyright to imagine what products could come from our IP.” Dean Wesley Smith “He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.” P.G. Wodehouse “It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of … Read more

The Journal: Memorial Day, and Just for Fun, Part 2

In today’s Journal * Memorial Day * Topic: Just for Fun, Part 2 * Oops * Of Interest Memorial Day I hope you will have a safe and happy but thoughtful Memorial Day. I hope you will consider all we still have in this once-great nation and on whose sacrifices we stand. Topic: Just for Fun, Part 2 Matt P. emailed this morning to ask how I would respond to writers “who claims that getting critiques helped them improve their writing and that if they hadn’t, they never would have gotten better.” Note: This topic, including this sentence, is delivered … Read more

The Journal: A Long Journey

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Faulkner * A Long Journey * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “When [the writer] begins to temper what he writes to who will read it, then I think the writing itself suffers.” William Faulkner “Sometimes the characters in my books surprise me, yes. They don’t surprise me in doing something that I never heard of or never imagined human beings doing before, but I hadn’t expected them to do it at that moment.” William Faulkner “I think that if the writer is going to write simply to express his own … Read more

The Journal: William Faulkner

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * William Faulkner * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “Once these people come to life … they take off and so the writer is going at a dead run behind them trying to put down what they say and do in time…. They have taken charge of the story. They tell it from then on in.” William Faulkner “These people I invent and after that I just run along and put down what they say and do.” William Faulkner “They are still in motion in my mind. I can laugh at … Read more

The Journal: Just for Fun

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Just for Fun * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “I can find motivation in my sleep. I write for me, to handle the challenge or to tell a particular story. I would write if civilization vanished and I had to scrounge up the last few pens and notepads to do so.” Kristine Kathryn Rusch “Faulkner or Hemingway … struggled like crazy to get recognition. But we, the young writers who studied their work, don’t know about those struggles. We only see how they’re treated after death.” Kristine Kathryn Rusch “[W]riting … Read more