My short story "Turn a Blind Eye" will be published by AM Ink Publishing in their upcoming horror collection The Half That You See. The book takes its name from a quote attributed to Edgar Allen Poe: Believe nothing you hear and only one half that you see. Have you ever been misquoted? So was …
Continue reading Turning Friends Into Villains: a Writer’s Right
I came across REJECTION IS PROTECTION as a part of the encouragement offered in #1000wordsofsummer, which is what it sounds like: a thousand words a day. Do you agree? Is rejection protection? I never thought of it that way, but as painful as rejection is, it might be the only medicine for my unready writing. …
In my first novel (I just began #3), I have a character say something like, you can know a lot about a person by the books he reads. My character said this because I believe this. Not that everything my characters say are sentiments with which I agree. Except the villains. I agree with everything …
This act of turning formless fear into places and characters [is] what a good writer does. - Rebecca Moon Ruark When I have written, and my task is to revise, revise, revise—that's my sweet spot. This can only happen after I've actually done the grunt work of pulling a story from who-knows-where, that mystical place …
What every writer needs: a smart, honest, critical reader. Or in a perfect world, a posse of smart-honest-criticals. Let's face it. If you have an Einsteinian friend, but he only heaps praise upon your work and doesn't share what could be better, how does that help? If you have an Eeyore-type who honestly sees prickles …
Writing is a solitary pursuit. I remember telling my professor-uncle I wanted to be a writer. His response was that I should prepare for a painful, lonely existence. I was in college and had taken a few writing classes. Still high on workshop praise and being ever the pragmatist, I decided writing was the "career" …
Continue reading Writing is a Solitary Pursuit. Being Read, a Sociable One.
If you're a writer, you may start out thin-skinned, but if you're to survive, you can't possibly stay that way. Most writers fall into the craft because of some strategically-timed compliments, generally given by authority figures and well-meaning English teachers in our formative years. This is usually coupled with an insatiable appetite for reading. …
Continue reading Spontaneous 7 Oxymoron: Thin-Skinned Writer
In Spontaneous 5 I mentioned spending upwards of seven (it was actually more like ten) hours on my first page. Well, you can see the fruit of that labor and even vote anonymously whether or not you'd keep reading my work HERE. This is me, begging you. I'm not asking for strokes. Vote your conscience. …
Continue reading An Invitation to FLOG This Writer AND…I Got Shot
Ever wonder why that would-be writer is taking FOR. EVER to produce something? I mean, Where's the beef? You've been at this for, what? –a year? So and so writer churns them out with the regularity of vegan bowel movements, and you're still just...writing? Here's how non-writers regard book-writing. They take the time it took …
If you're a cup half-empty person, you're always asking and answering that question. I am, admittedly, a prophet of doom. I can ALWAYS see how things can get worse. Just ask my husband. He'll tell you about the giant trees that stood majestically on our front lawn, the ones I imagined falling. Not in just …
KL Griffiths 