The Missus has a refrigerator magnet which features a head-and-shoulders hand-tinted photo of a wealthy, hoity-toity society-matron sort of woman; the text alongside says, “‘Frugal’ is such an ugly word.” (Ha!) Like many people, I suppose, I have great ambivalence about acquiring ever more Stuff. Examined closely, expressions like Wow, that would be so cool! [...]

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[Image: The Meteor of 1860, by Frederic Edwin Church] This summer marks the 150th anniversary of a remarkable celestial event: an Earth-grazing meteor procession of interest not just to the scientific world, but to the literary one as well. It wasn’t just notable: it was flat-out forgotten until recently. First, some definitions: An Earth-grazing meteor [...]

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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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[Image above: Peter Kubik's UFO shaped electronic drums, as featured at the Yanko Design site. The Yanko site says, "This electronic drum produces lighted impressions of your hand in psychedelic colors as it strikes the surface."] When it comes to storytelling, are you a mechanic or a gardener? A little of both? Or something else [...]

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Many writers hate the question from non-writers, “Where do you get your ideas?” I suspect one reason they hate it* is that they themselves don’t really know, but wish they did — so they could return to the well again, and again, and again… No such luck in the real world, of course. Some story [...]

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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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You probably already know the movie A Christmas Story, released in 1983 and based on the stories (and featuring the voiceover narration) of Jean Shepherd. And if you’ve been hanging around here for a while, you may also know of my own childhood Christmas memories — and if so, you’ll know I share what seems [...]

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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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It won’t come as news to anybody that blogs — all the “citizen journalist” talk notwithstanding — aren’t where you typically find news. They’re where you find feelings: reactions to news, sure, but also just general reactions to family and work situations, reactions to human behavior, reactions of self-approval and -disillusion, and so on. Somebody [...]

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I once read advice from a… novelist? playwright? not sure — anyhow, someone who said something like, “The hardest job in writing a story is getting a character from one room to another.” This stuck in my head because at the time I was struggling with just this difficulty. I kept trying to account for [...]

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