Category: writing
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Writerly resolutions: March status
Another month has come and gone and I continue to make decent progress on the novel. I have yet to miss a day’s work so far this year. I’ve finished the rewrite and revision of chapter 25 and done a lot of writing on chapter 26. I’m pretty sure that this chapter is going to be…
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Writerly resolutions: February status
2021 continues to be a good year for writing. It was even a good year for physical fitness for a while with my hitting my move goal every day until we had an extended cold spell this month which broke my streak. On the novel, I finished a first draft of chapter 25 and am almost…
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Writerly resolutions: January status
2021 has gotten off to a decent enough start. I’ve worked on the novel daily without fail—the first part of the month was spent digesting comments on two excerpts that I workshopped with my writing group, then I returned to the chapter I’d left dangling in November, managed to finish a first draft, a rewrite and…
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It looks like the Nelson Algren Literary Prize is endangered
The first clue was when my submission to the 2020 version of the contest disappeared from ubmittable without notice. The administrators of the prize tend to be not so great about closing out submissions on Submittable, so I didn’t pay much attention to it (in past years I’d had some marked “completed” a few “decline” and…
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Writerly resolutions for 2021
Last year, I wrote: 2019 was a disappointing year on many fronts, so I figure 2020 can’t help but be better. Ah, the naïveté of 2019. My goals for the year: Work on We, The Rescued daily until I’ve got it ready to pass on to other eyes to look at (which means finishing the first…
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Writerly resolutions for 2020—the post mortem
I set three goals for 2020: two related to finishing snd revising the novel and a third that largely involved doing nothing. I kind of failed at all three. I had bursts of productivity in the spring and the summer but continuing problems with my laptop knocked me out of commission for the last couple…
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Writerly resolutions: November status
No graph this month for progress on the novel because there was no progress. I wrote not one word. I had planned to finish some writing. Lots of writing. But during the first couple of weeks, I was trying to keep up with writing group obligations and put things off. Then, I decided that while…
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“The Namesake”: The Story Behind the Story
Usually, I post these when a story is available online or the issue can be ordered. But for whatever reason, the issue of Sandy River Review that contains this piece seems not to exist anywhere but contributor copies. If you’d like to read it, send me an email and I’ll send a PDF. The PDF version…
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Writerly resolutions: October status
The biggest change in my writing life this month is returning to having a critique group. Trying to balance critique group responsibilities with my own writing has been a bit of a challenge and I need to do better with this. I did manage to complete chapter 23 and make some progress on chapter 24 in…