Tired of Love Triangles
I’m getting a little tired of love triangles in fiction. I don’t mean to offend anyone. I probably have dozens of love triangles in my own stories and I don’t even realize it. My concern is that they seem to be everywhere now, not because they’re realistic or even make for good fiction, but simply [...]
Are You Too Old to Buy Books?
I was really excited to attend Dan Ariely’s talk at the St. Louis County Library Headquarters tonight for several reasons: I rarely attend talks or lectures of any kind, much less on my own. I think Ariely is brilliant, as exemplified by the increase in the number of blog entries here about behavioral economics. Ariely [...]
The Necessity of the Bad First Novel
In helping to critique friends’ writing and working on Blank Slate Press submissions recently, I’ve read a lot of quality work. One thing is evident: This isn’t the first time around the block for these writers. They’ve been honing their craft for years. Many of them, I’m guessing, have a really bad novel sitting in [...]
Graduate Advice
I work at a university church, so every year we say goodbye to a new batch of graduates. We had a sendoff Mass/lunch for them today, and usually the staff imparts some wisdom upon the graduates. Apparently that wasn’t in the schedule this year, but the advice I was going to give was: Your first [...]
Ask Jamey
A kind reader did my work for me by e-mailing me this hilarious letter. Dear Jamey, So I’ve got this beef with the English language. Often when writing by hand (and sometimes when typing) I tend to combine the words “with” and “the” when they are written back-to-back into a new word “withe” and I [...]
My First Book
I got something in the mail on Monday that made me smile. Big time. This is my first published book. Wait, you say? My name isn’t on the cover? Indeed it isn’t. I came on too late in the process to have that honor bestowed upon me. But I assure you that I wrote half [...]
Confession #12: My Time Is My Heaven
I had a unique weekend. I got home from work (followed by a trip to the grocery store) around 7:00 on Friday. I didn’t leave my condo for the next 44 hours. It was lovely. No, I’m not turning into a hermit. I just have some busy weekends coming up, so I committed to a [...]
The Rom Com of Your Life
I asked people on Twitter the other day what their favorite romantic comedies were. I got some great answers, most of which I had seen, but there were a few diamonds in the rough that I’ll have to watch before April (in April I’ll embark on Script Frenzy). Many of you gave me great feedback [...]
Script Frenzy
Every November, there’s an online event called National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Hundreds of thousands of people commit to writing a novel in a single month, starting with 0 words and ending with at least 50,000 by November 30. You don’t “win” anything, per se–just the joy that you completed a novel. It’s basically a [...]
How I Started a Publishing Company Today
Last summer, I decided to start taking my writing more seriously. I didn’t want to go back to school, but I knew that I needed to start getting high-quality feedback on my work (and learn from the experience of giving feedback of my own). Plus I wanted the experience for my startup, TypeTribe. Thus I [...]
Breaking News
A few months ago, I found out about an author named Dan Ariely. His work fascinated me, so I blogged about it a few times (How to Get Someone to Say Yes, The Power of an Irrelevant Option, and The Power of Origin Stories). I also started reading his blog. A few months ago, Dan [...]
My One-Person Fan Club
As I wrote about a few days ago, I am the featured writer in the great online literary magazine Reflection’s Edge this month. This news came as a suprise and an honor. An even bigger surprise came a few days after my story was published. I got fan mail. My first-ever piece of fan mail [...]