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Paying Attention to Your Sense of Play
I’d already written this post’s title. And I almost began the body of it with these words: “Sometimes, you just have to”— But, nah. I don’t think everyone, not even every writer, “just has to” do almost anything, much less experience the sort of off-the-wall moment I did one afternoon, years ago. And even less [...]
Paying Attention to I-Don’t-Know-What
When telling people about my flipping back and forth from technical writing to fiction, I usually say I went for five years without writing anything at all. That’s not exactly true. Truth is, after about four years I’d had enough. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I didn’t have anything specific I meant to write, but [...]
Paying Attention to Bits of Everyday Life
When writing-related blogs ask their writing audience when, exactly, they “knew” they were writers, the answer most commonly offered is: I’ve always wanted to write. Not so, in my case. Up until seventh grade, I had no such ambition, although teachers and family members had often complimented me on my writing. (I remember one grandmother [...]
Paying Attention to Meaning
I wanted to try something… something different for our writing workshop back then. Not something funny (or was it?). Not something in the psychological horror line. Not a genre piece, not an obviously literary piece. For that matter, none of the things that would pop into workshoppers’ heads when they sat down to read it [...]
Paying Attention to Action — or Is It Character?
I’ve written here before (here and here) about the terrors of newly-published-authordom — particularly, when the bad reviews land in your mailbox. But sometimes, even a bad review contains a nugget you cling to when the whole damned thing threatens to come unraveled, when your spirit sags and you wonder why you’re even bothering to [...]
Paying Attention to History
If you’ve been visiting Running After My Hat for more than a few days, you already know about what you might politely call my serial attentiveness. Theoretically, this is a blog about writing. But then, oh, yeah — there’s stuff about music. And true, I rattle on sometimes about reading, too, but isn’t that sorta [...]
Paying Attention to Setting
A few weeks ago, I read a blog entry somewhere about the claim (phrased variously) that the setting in a given work “becomes like [or even is] a character itself.” It drove the blogger crazy, because setting and character (in his/her opinion) have so little in common. Whatever my other reactions to the rant, it got [...]
