When you believe you alone possess the truth, locked securely away from the great unwashed, everyone who isn’t a supplicant is a thief trying to con the key from you.
Category Archives: Writing
“You Make a Mean Salad”
The Importance of Complicating Characters The summer after he and I graduated high school, my friend (for the sake of anonymity, let’s call him Ed, even though his real name is Joe), had perhaps his first truly adult date with his girlfriend (get your mind out of the gutter; I don’t mean it that way).Continue reading ““You Make a Mean Salad””
What I Learned Writing an Audio Play
What it was lie for me writing a “radio play” for the first time.
I Gave An Interview!
The wonderful blogger and all-around smarty Wynne Leon interviewed me a little while ago about my new audio play, Step 9, available wherever you get your podcasts (just search “New Normal Rep” and “Step 9” and you’re good to go! She generously allowed me to reprint it here: In March 2020 when Seattle went intoContinue reading “I Gave An Interview!”
A Mercifully Brief Post About Knowing Nothing.
Which, Let’s Face It, I Know a Fair Amount About. Like most people, I’ve led an unusual life. For me, part of its unorthodoxy is my insistence on trying to make a living as a writer. Let’s just say, it’s been an uphill climb. But occasionally I comfort myself with the knowledge that there areContinue reading “A Mercifully Brief Post About Knowing Nothing.”
Art: It’s Just Not That Into Me (Or a Lot of Us)
If you expect the Art Gods to act is if they have any interest in fairness, let alone thinking that all of your toil and hours of sacrifice somehow obligates them to give you a helping hand, you haven’t been paying attention.
Words, Words, Words
I’m a sucker for words of all shapes, sizes, and especially, sounds. But its chief function is communication… if you have an arcane word that is the absolute mot juste, have at.
But [a word like] stochastic? Its only pragmatic functions to show off. It’s sure as hell not trying to communicate, is it?
Killing Your Darlings. In Your Writing, I Mean. Not In Some Jim-Jonesian Way.
Hemingway said you should write your story, and then take all of the “best” lines out. Would we like F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Toni Morrison, or James Baldwin half as much if they took our their best lines?
Who Wants Hear Me Pontificate About Monologues?*
OF COURSE YOU DO, FRANKLY, WHO COULD RESIST SUCH A GREAT TEASER? The good news: this will be a short post. The bad news: I’ll be acting as if I know something. And I think it’s only fair to reming everyone of the late, great William Goldman wrote, “Nobody knows anything.” So, that said, letContinue reading “Who Wants Hear Me Pontificate About Monologues?*”
A Sudden Glory:Thoughts On Humor
Like anything else humans are or do, humor is equally equipped to salve or savage, to poison or purify, to nurse wounds or grudges. But please, rest assured I will in no way attempt to explain the nature of comedy, or what makes something “funny.”