From time to time someone asks me (as, no doubt, they ask other writers) why I do it. Why, specifically, I write fiction as opposed to nonfiction. It really is hard to explain to those who seem tone-deaf to what we call Art. Sometimes it’s hard to explain to yourself. The short answer for me is that I love it. I love creating stories and weird stuff and making up plots, because I always loved stories. (When I was a kid, I’d watch movies in which a group of people are thrust into a really cool adventure and at some point one of them would talk about wanting to just go home and having everything return to normal. …
Category: Writing
Rio Bravo
I had to go to Wal-Mart this past weekend. I know, I know, big box store, destructive of small town America, yadda-yadda. I hate them, but once a year we do a Wal-Mart run for all kinds of stuff that, frankly, just ain’t as cheap anywhere else—toilet paper, vitamins, tissue paper, day-to-day Stuff.
Usually I go with Donna. This time she was in Iowa and I did it solo.
Since I was there anyway, I browsed the big stack of remainder DVDs they always have and I went a little bonkers. I bought the first season of the original Robin Hood with Richard Greene. …
Appearances Etc
I have been remiss. I ought to be posting the things I’m doing publicly here (among other places) and it’s been just crazy enough that I keep forgetting to do this. One of the reasons I need a publicist. But that will have to wait till I have something new to publicize, like a book coming out or something writerly like that.
Meanwhile, I am doing things folks might be interested in. So.
October 25th I will be at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, for the Columbia Chapter of the Missouri Writers Guild annual conference. I will be the keynote speaker, plus I will be conducting a session on making the change from science fiction to historical writing.…
Smart Novels
Recently I had a conversation with a friend who told me about the latest rejection of her novel (by an agent). There was nothing but praise from the agent, but ultimately the verdict came down to “This book is just too smart to sell.”
Much scratching of head and muttered curses ensued and I sympathized. I’ve read the book in question and it is indeed a smart book. Very smart. It’s one of the rare examples of a novel that, from time to time, we hear about from an author in his or her cups complaining of being ignored by the publishing industry with the final dismissal of “Well, I’m just too good for them.” …
Odd Bits
“The historian of manners obeys harsher laws than those that bind the historian of facts. He must make everything seem plausible, even the Truth; whereas in the domain of history properly so-called, the impossible is justified by the fact that it occurred.” Honore de Balzac
The central paradox of contemporary Christian fundamentalism is its spin on the message that the world and its concerns are irrelevant, and that soon, very soon, it will all pass away—and then turning around and making temporal behavior the basis for an ongoing political activism that is just shy of fascistic.
…“His heart was a purple castle.Â
Today’s Quotes
In a way, doing these are a way to not have to think of something original to write. On the other hand, some of these I made up to begin with, so originality isn’t the problem. Anyway, a few more.
…Most correlations are noncausal; when correlations are causal, the fact and the strength of the correlation rarely specify the nature of the cause.
“The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.”Â
Little Lost Book
We returned home one year from a worldcon (world science fiction convention, for those who may not know the nomenclature)—I forget which year—and promptly I lost a book. Or a box of books. You see, we’d early on gotten into the habit of mailing our purchases home rather than try to take boxes of books on the plane. (The first worldcon we went to in 1984 resulted in about three hefty boxes going back, all of which cost around a hundred and fifty dollars. Today that much would fit in one (small) box.) This system worked pretty well until this time.…