Tag: creative writing

Selling Ideas

Come up with a crazy business idea

I’m working off of this daily prompt under the assumption that “crazy business idea” means something that no sane, rational person would actually attempt with a serious expectation of success. Something so absurd that only a crazy person would expect it to turn a profit. Something that –

Let’s face it, somebody would try to do this in real life, and scarily enough, it might just work.

My idea is to sell ideas as a service.

No, no, not selling an idea for a type of service, but selling actual ideas. For example, Joe Citizen wakes up one day and wonders, “What should I have for breakfast? I can’t decide.” So, he calls up Ideas, Inc. and asks. Ideas, Inc. tells him to make waffles. What a good idea!

Jane Doe wants to know where her son should go to school. Ideas, Inc. to the rescue! And what should he major in when he enters college? Ideas, Inc. can tell you!

Wondering what car to buy and in what color? A monthly subscription to Ideas, Inc. can give you these answers and more!

Why bother thinking when you can subscribe to a service that thinks for you?

Like I said, silly and nonsensical. But is it really? Hmm…

And if I ever see this service in real-life, I will know somebody stole the idea from me, heh.

***

My new book, The Trickster’s Lament, is currently available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format.

“Hermes is not having the best time. He walks a fine line, and his duty as messenger of Olympus weighs heavily on him. Being a god in the modern age means living in a world that no longer believes in gods. How much can one deity accomplish when no one respects him anymore? And why do his instincts tell him that he, the son of Zeus, is losing favor with his own family?

Tensions abound. The upstart Young Gods play dangerous games using entire cities as their boards. Formless monsters strike from the nighttime shadows, terrorizing hapless mortals. Agents of rival pantheons scheme to thwart Olympus’ designs. In the thick of it all, Hermes does what he does best: trick, lie, and cheat his way to victory.

He may be disrespected. He may be kicked about. He may even be falling out with his pantheon. But Hermes is a trickster. He knows how to play dirty in a world that doesn’t play fair. But though he can best man, beast, and god, he isn’t prepared for his wiliest opponent yet: his own conscience.”

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

What Writing My Second Book Has Taught Me

I’ve heard that writing your second book is harder than writing the first. Your first book may be a hit, but it may also be a fluke, a one and done deal. But moving on to the second? Ah, that’s when you find out if you really have the chops to be a writer.

Well, crafting my second book has gone mostly smoothly. The story came together much more easily, I’ve gained a better understanding of the characters and their motivations and personalities, and it’s been a fun ride. Heck, I got it finished in much less time than the first: about a year and a half from beginning to final draft. But I also made mistakes that I didn’t with my first project.

Now, why is that? Why did I order a paperback cover when I didn’t have my final page count ready? Why did I make silly oversights in editing that I only noticed after sending the book in for formatting?

The only answer I have thus far is that I was rushing. I jumped the gun, I got a little too lax, I was so fixed on the end goal that I didn’t pay attention to all the hurdles. I was impatient, and I didn’t even realize it.

Fortunately, I spotted these errors in time and fixed them. Lesson learned.

I thought I’d share my insights here for any other budding authors to read. Impatience is a bane of writers. Maybe you have just the one novel to write in your lifetime. You’ve spent years on it and are eager to finally see it published. Or maybe you have a series in mind, a long-running story told over several books, and you’re ready to move on to the next leg in the journey.

Either way, the temptation to push through and stop paying attention to details is strong. Resist it! A good novel takes time. You have plenty of it to perfect your story, and the copyright page, and the title, and the word count, and so forth. Don’t publish until you know that your book is exactly the way you want it.

Sweat the details. It saves so much trouble in the long run if you do.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

When I Was Born …

… the world changed forever.

The Berlin Wall came down. I’m fairly certain this was a direct consequence of my birth.

The original Michael Keaton Batman movie opened in theaters. Also a direct consequence of my existence, no doubt.

Disney’s The Little Mermaid also opened in theaters. I claim direct responsibility for the Disney Renaissance, thank you.

The first commercial internet service providers became available. Because of me, of course.

Can you guess what year I was born?

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life. With a dash of dry humor.

Idle Questions for a Monday Evening

Monday is finally over. The mind is tired from thinking hard. Time to let it mull over silly questions:

Why can we say “sunshine” and people know we mean sunlight, but not say “moonshine” without meaning homemade alcohol?

Why are eggs in the dairy department when they have nothing to do with milk and cheese?

Why do we say “head over heels? in love?” Our heads are above our heels by default.

Why does everyone have to buckle up in cars, but only the drivers get seatbelts on buses?

Why do we say “make a cup of coffee?” Nobody makes a whole new cup, just the coffee to put into it.

Why do people keep trying to make squirrel-proof birdfeeders? They never work.

Why do people want to colonize Mars? What’s there that’s worth colonizing?

Why is it that the more expensive your meal at a restaurant is, the more likely the chef was touching it all over with his fingers? That’s gross.

How many more idle questions can you come up with?

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Sleepless Opportunities

If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?

Time enough at last!

Sleep takes up most of our lives. 7-9 hours every day. 14-15 hours left to do what we need to do – work, eat, chores, leisure. What if I had those extra 9 hours to myself? What if I could do whatever I wanted with all that extra time?

The strange thing is, I’m not sure if I would do much of anything. I’ve noticed that the amount of time I have to do something is directly proportional to how little I am motivated to do it. Perhaps it’s the same as being rich – one hundred dollars doesn’t mean much when you have one hundred million.

What I would try to do is to increase the amount of time that I exercise, and get more chores done, and maybe try out some recipes I’ve always wanted to make. And I’d certainly want to write more and read more and catch up on all the hobbies that have been nagging at my mind. But, I honestly don’t know if I would.

Time is precious. And less time motivates me to try to be more careful with it. I can’t do everything, so I endeavor to do what truly matters to me.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Writers, Don’t Go It Alone

Writing is by and large a solitary activity. It isn’t something generally done in a group save for perhaps writing jams and community workshops. However, when writing your novel, short story, poetry, or any other project, you’re probably going to spend the lion’s share of your time by yourself, with only your ideas and thoughts to keep you company on the journey.

However, writing is not an isolated activity, as I have discovered. While writing a novel draft may be done in private, what comes afterward needs other people: submitting drafts to beta readers, finding editors to review your work, maybe even sharing passages with a local writers’ group. Why? Well, partly because we all need a few extra pairs of eyes to see the good and bad in our work that we can’t see ourselves. But we also need a smidgeon of encouragement from time to time.

I don’t say this out of selfishness or self-pity. All writers must build confidence in their work if they intend to publish. But let’s face facts. We all feel discouraged at some point or another. Perhaps we’ve hit writer’s block or we look back on our recent work and want to gag. Or maybe, even though everything is going swimmingly and we’re hitting all our deadlines, we still can’t shake off the inexplicable doldrums we’re feeling. And we need someone to talk to, someone we can trust and confide in.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, writers are not cut off from the world. We need other people, and we need encouragement. Being left alone with only our own thoughts to keep us company – well, I don’t know about you, but as a writer I tend to be a very harsh critic of my own work, always asking if it’s really any good.

Writing can become a lonely journey. Find someone, or a couple someones, willing to stick with you through it all, give honest feedback, be supportive, and most of all, be a friend. Writers shouldn’t live in a vacuum. It’s not healthy (or even really possible), and after all, half the fun of writing is to see people’s reactions to the things we create.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Exactly Where I Want to Live

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

I would live in a comfortable cabin in the middle of a sparse but lush forest with no neighbors within shouting distance and located exactly one hour away from the nearest town. I would also have electricity and a hot tub.

Those who read my musings on my city of the future may be aware that when a daily prompt asks me what I want, I go whole hog with exactly what I want. Will I ever get it? Probably not, but my imagination doesn’t have to agree with reality. I want a cozy cabin, I want peace and quiet, and I want to huddle up on my couch and watch my big-screen TV while the birds chirp outside. And when I need to go shopping, I want the store to be an hour’s drive away.

Fantasizing about an idyllic, Arcadian existence is all fun and dandy, but actually living it is a different case entirely. Loafing around on a tropical island is fine until you need to take a shower and have no soap and shampoo. Or towels and washcloths. Or plumbing. Not to mention the bugs and the heat and the storms. Yes, I admit it, I like modern amenities as much as I like nature. So, I would live close to nature, but not too close, thank you very much.

Civilization strove for millennia to invent the modern conveniences we currently enjoy, and some of them were invented for very good reason. Who am I to throw aside all that hard work?

Okay, maybe I could go without the hot tub …

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Deep Questions about Deep Literature

Do you remember literature classes in high school? How you would spend hours every day discussing the symbolic value of the billboard in The Great Gatsby and analyzing what each character represented in The Lord of the Flies? A spade is never just a spade in lit class. There is always a deeper meaning.

So can anyone explain to me why all the books students have to read are so dang depressing?

Looking back, this is what I feel that we were doing: Taking a beautiful flower and plucking its petals and cutting the stem and digging up the roots to see why it was a beautiful flower. And we very scientifically removed everything beautiful about it.

But darn it, we got educated about great literature. We knew what metaphor was. And allegory. And the subtle social critiques and genre deconstructions that mark all literary classics. We obtained knowledge! We justified our tuition!

There are people who make their living by reading stories and telling other people whether they are good or not. And their word is law, because there is no such thing as an opinion they understand the rules that govern quality writing. Where they obtain this arcane knowledge is unknown. Presumably, they dissected enough flowers.

Good stories seem to be a case of majority rules. If enough people say it’s good, it must be good. Maybe. But I didn’t like The Great Gatsby, so does that mean it’s not a good book or I’m not a good writer? Or perhaps if I had read it on my own time instead of being forced to analyze that darn stupid billboard I would have liked it.

What does it matter what color the curtains are or what suit the one character is wearing in each scene? It matters because somebody important says it matters, but what if it’s not the author saying it? Are we seeing what the writer put there, or what we think is there? Are we seeing meaning where there is none, or is the meaning not what we think it means? Does it mean what people say it means, or does it mean something else, which means that what I want it to mean means that it means the wrong thing from what everyone else thinks it means? Because that’s just mean.

Or maybe we’re just really good at gaslighting ourselves into thinking a book somebody wrote to pay their bills is a magnum opus. The writer wings it, hears what critics say, nods sagely and says, “Yes, that’s exactly what it means.”

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Kid at Heart

What does it mean to be a kid at heart?

Probably not screaming when you don’t get dessert and walking into the house with mud covering your shoes.

“Kid at heart” is one of those curious expressions we use and don’t give much thought to. There’s a general consensus that everyone knows what it means, but do we really know what it actually means? Kids are selfish, loud, noisy, sometimes smelly, and generally very expensive. They are also seen as innocent, full of potential, and the future of civilization. Which may or may not be true (especially that part about innocence).

So, what does it mean to be a “kid at heart?” Perhaps it simply means to not let go of youthful vigor and enthusiasm. To not be jaded, as kids so rarely are, and to see the world as something fresh and new every day, as kids so often do. Kids are as flawed as adults, so I don’t think we should see childhood as a perfect little utopia long lost, but rather as a time when we were willing to have a little more joy in our lives and a little more willingness to learn.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Taking A Risk

What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to?

I’m not much of a big risk-taker in general, but then again, everyone’s definition of “risk” varies. What’s mundane for you can be nerve-rattling for me, and vice versa.

A friend of mine runs a podcast and has invited me to join it one day. For me, that’s a risk, not because I really stand to lose anything, but because I’m the nervous sort. Podcasts aren’t the same as public speaking, but they are public, and I’m neither the most photogenic nor the most outgoing person. The risk, then, would be the risk of me making a fool of myself across the Internet, or the corner of it that listens to my friend’s podcast, anyway.

There’s a lot of fear, there, but that’s what makes it a risk, right? And maybe someday I’ll muster up the courage to take him up on his offer.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.