Just another writer

  • Song of the Month: Feelin’ Love by Paula Cole from This Fire

    Song of the Month: Feelin’ Love by Paula Cole from This Fire

    This song was never a single from Paula Cole’s second album, but it really should have been. In his song, Cole manages to convey in music and lyrics the feeling of sex perfectly. Some of it is in the doubles-entrendes lyrics, but it also comes from the music itself. Cole’s breathy singing conveys a sense…

  • Sonnet 18 after much machine translation

    Sonnet 18 after much machine translation

    Do I cut your summer?You are very beautiful and very sweet.Can change by a strong wind.And put the summer in a short time.It’s hot in the eyes of the sky,It’s a gold weight.The best time of this time is correctActivity or changeBut all the summer never passes.To lose damage;His garden not dead when the timeIf…

  • Writerly resolutions: March status

    Writerly resolutions: March status

    Sometimes a graph doesn’t tell the whole story. My graph looks like for about a third of the month I didn’t make much progress but in fact, even though my word count didn’t move around much (and even dropped a bit), that was a result of wrestling with a troublesome passage in the first draft and…

  • Song of the Month: I’d Have You Anytime by Evan Rachel Wood from Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International

    Song of the Month: I’d Have You Anytime by Evan Rachel Wood from Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International

    This is a bit of an odd bird on a tribute album to Bob Dylan in that it’s really much more of a George Harrison song than a Dylan song (the melody on the verses is unmistakably Harrison-esque), but let’s put that aside.  I first became aware of Evan Rachel Wood from her turn in…

  • It’s Lent

    It’s Lent

    Trigger warning: earnest religiosity ahead. Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. There are a lot of folks who seem to take this as a sort of performative event, kind of missing a key passage from today’s reading: “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they…

  • Writerly resolutions: February status

    Writerly resolutions: February status

    Even though there was one less day and I missed a day of writing, I managed to get more words rewritten for the novel this month than last. I’ve also been in a bit of a research binge of late with even more books added to my list and more books read. Israel Joseph Singer’s¹ novel…

  • Song of the Month: Lavender by Marillion from Misplaced Childhood

    Song of the Month: Lavender by Marillion from Misplaced Childhood

    Misplaced Childhood is, I think, the best of the neo-prog albums that came out after the first wave of prog, with a great mix of accessibility and extravagance. And somehow, with all of that, and the fact that the album is essentially a single long song (split in two in the original release but performed without…

  • Writerly resolutions: January Status

    Writerly resolutions: January Status

    I succeeded in getting at least a little bit of writing done on the novel every day this month. At the current pace I’ll have draft two finished in mid-July. Of course there are always bits of research digressions which can throw me off (like I wanted to know what the name of the railroad tracks…

  • Song of the Month: Somebody’s Baby by Jackson Browne from Solo Acoustic Vol. 2

    Song of the Month: Somebody’s Baby by Jackson Browne from Solo Acoustic Vol. 2

    Something new. Once a month I’m going to highlight a song from my music collection that’s worth a listen or twenty. To start things off, I’m going with a solo acoustic version of Jackson Browne’s “Somebody’s Baby.” The song was originally released as part of the soundtrack for Fast Times at Ridgemont High which I don’t…