The Day Rolled out a little before 3. Still have a bug but it’s not a major deal. Just very slight headaches that come and go accompanied by (also very slight) chills/fever and nausea. Just blah, y’know? I did get out for a walk. I decided to do hills, into and out of a wash off Sybil Road. I hoped to shove whatever this is on through my system, but that doesn’t work like it did … Read more
The Day Rolled out a little after 2. It’s September 1, a shiny brand-new month. New possibilities, newly re-set goals. Thank goodness. Coffee and email to wake up. No walk today. Had a violent storm come through here yesterday. That and this little bug that’s taken hold of me recently will keep me from walking today. I’ll walk tomorrow for sure. A good long one. Well, back to writing today. It is September 1. No real … Read more
Note: This post first appeared in my blog in 2012. I’ve updated it with new information. Hi Folks, Seems like every other week or so someone reports to me that a writing instructor or contest judge or other self-appointed expert has advised that the writer should use less dialogue and more narrative in a given story. Recently, a respondent recalled the exact wording the professor of ludicrosity used: “If you change a lot of this dialogue … Read more
The end of a month. A horrible month. Whew. Glad to see this one end. The Day Rolled out a little before 3. I was up late (for me) last night working with web browsers. I’ll tell you the rest in the Topic below. A personal note — I’ve received a few emails recently from some of you expressing concern for what’s going on. Really, nothing. Just life. (grin) But I’m doing a mostly daily journal here, … Read more
The Day Rolled out right at 2 this morning. Good to feel back on schedule. Spent more time this morning on email than usual but for a good reason. I woke to Dr. Mardy Groethe’s weekly newsletter in my inbox. Dr. Mardy is a verbivore. He is the author of I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like, Oxymoronica, and several other books in the same general vein. Each week his newsletter contains an interesting “puzzler” regarding a … Read more
The Day Rolled out a little late at quarter to 3. Wow. I hope all of you who are reading this are having a lot better month with your writing than I am so far. With the month mostly gone, it isn’t likely to improve much either. No walk today. Not a lot else either, except I switched my internet browser from Firefox over to Opera. I’m more than happy with it. For one thing, whenever … Read more
The Day Rolled out a little early this morning at about 1:30. After waking up with coffee and email, I thought about yesterday’s post. I was a little harsh maybe. For years I’ve seen writers, even retired, very successful business people, allow various companies to take advantage of them. I despise those companies, and I don’t mind being vocal about it. But the thing is, many writers bring these things on themselves. They’re intelligent people, by … Read more
The Day Rolled out a little after 2 this morning again. The hits just keep on comin’. First, I don’t feel well. Had a short, unsuccessful walk punctuated by the fear that a high-velocity rainstorm was going to notice me and come my way. Back to the house, and pretty much blah ever since. Second, what I wrote in your Topic of the Night below. I won’t be doing any writing today, other than this stuff … Read more
The Day Rolled out a little after 2 this morning. Coffee and emails to wake up, and then a shocker from the Smashwords blog. Mark Coker has decided to end his association with Flipkart, the small ebook retailer in India. That effectively hands Amazon a monopoly in distributing ebooks on that continent. Although I understand why he’s doing it, I don’t like that even in the title of his post he seems to blame Amazon. Regardless … Read more
Hi Folks, This will be an extra blog post. On 1 September I’ll be back to posting nuts and bolts how-to information for writing. I’ve come to see my daily journal, the other major blog post from this site, as eminently more important than this one. In it, I outline my day (the day of a professional writer) and write a Topic of the Night on most nights. I also generally pass along whatever important tidbits … Read more