Tag: writing about writing

  • Writing Journalism

    Okay, just getting this out there:

    I do not envy journalists anymore. Not one bit.

    I’m sure it gets easier the more you do it, but I tried to write a fictional article for Everything Falls Apart and discovered that writing one following the styles set out for pieces of journalism breaks almost every single habit and rule of writing for poetry or fiction. Or even technical papers (which is part of my day job).

    It took me four hours to write <500 words, with multitudes of rewrites as I discovered in editing that I had slipped into the habits formed by writing fiction.

    My respect for copy-editors and journalists has gone upwards by a significant degree. It takes an entirely different mindset (for weak-minded me) to do what they do. And how!

    And — to be 100% transparent about the process — I suspect there are still places that it could be fine-tuned in the article.

    So, hats off to those folks. Their job is not a clear cut nor as easy as they make it look.

  • Upcoming serial: Everything Falls Apart

    Photo by Sergei Vasilenko on Unsplash, design by michael raven

    I am getting closer to posting the first piece of an experimental serialized bit of fiction called “Everything Falls Apart”.

    I feel I owe everyone some explanations about the incoming content.

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  • Crashburn

    Yesterday evening was a crashburn kind of writing sesh. The spirit is willing, but the flesh… and all that.

    Oof.

    What set it all up is that I did a reset on the serial I had plans for.

    Name change possibly in the works because Everything Falls Apart is a little too, well, apocalyptic sounding for what I have in mind. This story churning around in my head is unlike most of the tales you may have read from me. It is present day and not post-apocalyptic. Nothing fantasy. Nothing science fiction. Nothing cosmic horror. Nothing overtly absurd.

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  • EFA

    I am toying around with a writing idea that I’ve thrown out to other people because I like the idea of it, but have frankly been afraid of trying myself solo. With a writing partner, possibly. Solo? It seems well outside my wheelhouse.

    As previously mentioned, I think I should overcome these reluctances of mine to go outside my usual writing and just do things that seem hard, but ones that also use my “natural voice”, whatever that might mean.

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  • What did my time away give me?

    It was only a week away from posting new material, although it seemed longer except when it felt shorter. I wrote daily; I didn’t post daily.

    So, where is the flood of new material, Michael?

    There is nothing I am willing to post here or elsewhere (i.e., discord) at this time, if ever.

    So, what was the point?

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  • Half-Penny Thoughts — 04sept26

    What’s with this trend I am seeing of writers who publish Kindle-first books of giving superfluous subtitles to their work?

    Or has it always been around at this frequency and I am only now noticing it? I am well aware that the idea of using a superfluous subtitle in of itself is not a new thing, but when this month’s offerings of “free” Kindle books for Prime customers are littered with subtitles that make no sense to add, I have some head scratching going on inside my skull.

    “Title: A Novel“

    “Title: A Thriller“

    “Title: A Historical Romance“

    “Title: A Horror Story“

    In every case, the subtitle doesn’t add to the title, but arguably subtracts from it. The subtitle describes the book’s genre/subgenre, it doesn’t create an narrative atmosphere in any way.

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  • Disruptence and Discord.ance

    My break from posting new content notwithstanding while I do a personal reset, I am not planning at sitting idle, tapping at tabletops with forefinger and repeating “What to do? What to do?” while trying to find a Zen moment streaming Yanni.

    As appealing as it might be to listen to Yawni all day, I am honestly trying to disrupt my personal thinking and writing processes.

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  • Of pauses and portents

    I want to thank all of you who have,

    • taken the time to read the ongoing serialized gothic western I’ve been writing, and
    • who have been willing to migrate over to the site I have dedicated to the tale

    Your support, especially in light of my quirks, is absolutely inspiring.

    I know, it is odd for someone to not track readers, not track likes and to put all comments into a non-interactive “guestbook” bucket. Plus, because I wanted to make the site more reader-focused than content-focused, I’ve added all other kinds of atypical wonk to the overall experience.

    It means a lot to me that you put up my attempts to make a site more reader-friendly than blog-friendly.

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  • Just a snack

    Because, sometimes you just want a snack.

    Some people might say I’ve probably bit off more than I can check with the running serial, Vengeance, My Heart, and they might be right in that assessment.

    The story currently sits with twenty-six planned episodes (and approximately 4 posts per episode) for the full story arc and my reserving the right to extend it to a second and a third arc. Clocking in currently at ~40k words, I am trending towards about 170 pages (assuming 235 word/page when you account for rapid-fire dialog and end-chapter whitespaces.

    That’s about 1/3 of the way for folks reading up through today. An estimated 400-page novel when we are all said and done.

    So why the heck am I looking sideways when I have a long haul ahead (and I am running out of content to share post-Ep. 6)?

    As I said, sometimes you just want a snack. And that goes for writing. too.

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  • One of those writing about writing posts

    As the story in Vengeance, My Heart shifts from setting tone and atmosphere to character evolution and development — and quite possibly as a result of changing focus from short, snappy bite sized pieces of the story and shifting over to giving the story more room to breathe — I’ve discovered more tolerance as the writer for longer episode fragments.

    My goal up through the end of Episode 5, was to make sure there was a targeted max word count for each fragment/part/sub-episode to finding in Episode 6 that character development doesn’t work so well with those kinds of metrics. I don’t think it is a significant spoiler to say it is about time to move to that tone/color-setting of the early episodes to dig down into the motivations and explain, in drip-feed fashion, the previously unexplained.

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