The blank page is every writer’s closed door. Even though I know what I’m writing about, I’m often stuck at how I want to tell the story. Sometimes I find myself banging on that closed door for hours, screaming “let me in!” Over decades of a writing career, I’ve learned this is an exercise in […]
There is, maybe, a romanticized ideal of the Writer as a lone genius. This perfect Writer, whoever they may be, has no need for clients or editors, outlines or drafts. Sitting at their desk, or maybe in a coffee shop, they have an idea, spin up the perfect prose, and send it out to be […]
I’ve never thought much about how different people approach reading horror stories. After all, I don’t write scary stories. But I recently attended an event celebrating the Centennial Anniversary of the Poe Museum in Richmond, Va., and someone posed the question: What kind of story gives children goosebumps? What type frightens a teenager? I’m sure […]
“…Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending . . . Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume.” Sounds […]
If you’re like me, the first thing you do each morning when you check your email is check off the messages that look like spam and hit the “delete” button. We’re all inundated with so many marketing emails that many of us choose to ignore most (if not all) of them. This holds true not […]
