[Alfalfa, of the Our Gang comedies, sings of his love for sweet little round-faced, soft-focus Darla. And yes, I know: the song title doesn't have that extra syllable in it. :)] Whom, exactly, do you try to impress? Note that I’m not asking about classes or groups of people. Most of us would like to [...]

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Complicated here, during the last week. Not bad, just… complicated. Thought I’d sort of summarize a couple of points of potential interest, but first, a question for regular visitors: Have you had problems accessing RAMH recently? One of your number has reported getting repeated “the connection was reset by the server” errors. It’s prevented her [...]

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This Paying Attention to… series on writing fiction concentrates, for the most part, on what to do when writing. More exactly, it covers things I need to remind myself to pay attention to — particularly as I’ve been working on Seems to Fit. In this post, I want to look at what to when not [...]

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[Image: Forked Tongue at Window Rock, one of  a series of "Arizona Postcards" by Scottish artist James "Jimmy" Cosgrove. To view the entire collection, see this page.] A science-fiction story I read long ago tells of a visitor from another planet who simply cannot understand why human beings lie. I don’t remember much about the [...]

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I may never have to master anything more difficult than thinking, and thinking convincingly, like multiple characters. It’s not just a matter of the word choices and rhythms of their dialogue (although it includes that). And it’s not just a matter of the outward manifestations of their natures — gender, style of dress, and so [...]

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“Ambivalence” doesn’t even come close to capturing my schizoid views about magic (or magical) realism. The term has been around since the early part of the twentieth century, and for most of its life has been associated especially with the work of certain Latin American authors. Here’s part of the definition from A Glossary of [...]

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[Looking back through this post, I see that I've used the word "you" a lot in passages manifestly instructional or outright didactic, especially the last section -- as though barking orders at you, the reader. Not so: it's just me, talking to myself.] Moonrat, God bless ‘er, last week resurrected the Write Your A** Off [...]

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[Note to regular readers: You may have noticed a change in my online tempo in the last week -- I sure have: my visits to your blogs are a little more erratic, my postings here a little less... I don't know... "focused," maybe? Partly, true, my spotty attendance is because the pace of my 9-to-5 [...]

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[Image: "Marshmallow Gun" (excerpt) -- click for full original at xkcd.] I realized a couple days ago — during this criminally busy week — that I hadn’t posted any writing samples in a long time. Many of the (non-blogging) pieces I’ve posted on RAMH are grouped together under the category called “Paying Attention.” But I [...]

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From Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig: You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. From “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” a story by Jorge Luis Borges (translation by James E. Irby): [Menard] did not want to [...]

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