“This” Announcement
I haven’t blogged since my dearest friend Blaise passed away. Outside of my tribute to her, writing – as a practice – just seemed meaningless. It took a couple of months before that internal narrative began to chug again, however sporadically. It hasn’t genuinely sparked my imagination yet. There were things I was working on, and things I wanted to begin, but I’ve (since) found trouble getting into them. The best I’ve managed is some rants about football and one Star Wars review. I’ve focused on revision – the last redraft of a new novel (which Blaise, always my primary alpha reader, was halfway through reading), and then various scripts.…
August Falling: Music and Its Role
When I was younger, I was able to write through anything. It wasn’t uncommon to have the radio blaring in the background. As I got older, the ads started to irritate me – well, those annoying ones (“Hello! Hello!”) where somebody was talking right at you. They always broke my concentration. Listening to CDs helped solve that problem. Originally, I’d just play anything. But as I grew more experienced and idiosyncratic (as a writer) I’d chose music that tonally suited whatever I was writing. It helped get me in the right mood and created a mindset that contributed to the story. When I was thirty, I went through terrible clusters…