Indie Author, Podcaster
I submitted a short short story (less than 1,000 words) to my writing group.
I submitted a short short story (less than 1,000 words) to my writing group. It’s really more of a vignette I had written many years ago. I don’t know what to do with it. Perhaps they’ll have suggestions. At the very least, I may post it here after it’s been edited.
No fooling, today I’m setting this web site off into the unknown. I had promised myself that I’d launch on April 1.
No fooling, today I’m setting this web site off into the unknown. I had promised myself that I’d launch on April 1. I knew that if I waited for everything to be perfect, I’d procrastinate indefinitely. I feel better. I have the ground under my feet and I’ll add content and features as they are ready.
Why is it that when it comes to developing web projects for myself, I’m often stoppered?
Why is it that when it comes to developing web projects for myself, I’m often stoppered?
With clients, confidence flows and ideas swamp my head, whereas even a trickle of creativity must be coaxed out for my own work.
Without a client, I miss the enjoyment of collaboration. And I miss out on the challenge of specifications, budgets, and deadlines.
In moments of inspiration, I will sketch my ideas on scraps or maybe go as far as design a layout and color palette in Fireworks. But inevitably, work or diversions will sweep me up, so that when I get back, time has washed away the initial excitement. What was once inspired now, to my mind, looks insipid.
However, in all my false-starts, the content and purpose of the site has remained the same. It’s for me. It’s a place for me to collect and reflect my interests. This is to be a storehouse with an ever-increasing inventory of resources for creative writing and web development.
So enough! Just put it down, I tell myself. Make a simple site and let the content spill out. And I have. Ok? I put aside second- and third-guessing and focused on getting the content up.
I expect for a long time I will have a readership of one, the occasional lost visitor looking for a different Joshua Paul Cane, and friends who drop in to humor me so that I’ll leave them alone, already.
So who is reading this now? Well if it’s you and not me, contact me with your thoughts. I hope you enjoy.
Writers know that an essential part of honing our craft is reading the works of others. Not simply reading one word and sentence after another through the end, but pausing over passages, re-reading, picking apart, unpacking to understand what makes the work good, great or bad.
Writers know that an essential part of honing our craft is reading the works of others. Not simply reading one word and sentence after another through the end, but pausing over passages, re-reading, picking apart, unpacking to understand what makes the work good, great or bad. (I don’t do this often enough myself. I’ll use this post as a reminder.)
So consider this as a recommendation, passed from a friend in my writing group to you.
Literary critic James Wood wrote a book called, How Fiction Works (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Wood applies his skill at helping his audience understand the fundamentals of great writing by going through concrete examples of literature’s estimable works.
Wood writes in an engaging, almost conversational style. At times I had felt as though I were a guest in his private library. There he plucked books off shelves and tapped his finger at passages that exemplify his points on narration, dialogue, characterization and so on.
The 288 pages are a quick read and worth your time.
