1: The Incorrigible Writer Gavin: I’m told I need a hook at the beginning of my delivery to get the reader in. But, I don’t like fish nibbling my toes much. And readers that are hooked want to blame the whole journey on the fisherman. I much prefer to think of a reader as an…
Author: J.D. Saward
A Collage of Cascading Opacity (Like the Wind #2)
Content warning: Sexual Assault. -Ed. Response to Delivery One It has arisen in me the feeling of the mask. The feeling of Celia saying, “Go into your protective shield of rampant happiness [the mask] and stop molesting me.” The disintegrated soul molests itself. Feminine, technological aspects, masculine and lies, fronts, protective shields. This piece by…
Like the Wind: Preface and Prologue
Series Preface: The Grand Art of Story In a story it is perhaps hard to appreciate a character’s journey that is tangential to our own. Not much being offered that helps us navigate our own. Or helps us understand our own, or inspires us to forget our own for a few hours, or to make…
An Archaic Concept: Postscript / Bridge
Stop! If you haven’t read the previous Delivery, you can find it here: And if you are wondering what this “Archaic Concept” stuff is, why not start at the first Delivery? Part One The old man closes his laptop and sighs. Done. That entire thread of his life is now documented. Documented as fiction, as…
An Archaic Concept of Me, Delivery 12: Song of the Sea
Where we left it in Delivery 11: “And you did not have sex with him?” I asked bluntly as I turned my gaze to her eyes again. Even as I asked I felt I was out of line. The subject of sex had suddenly appeared in my own mind. I remembered what she had told…
Soul-Dancer (An Archaic Concept of Me, 11)
Where we left it in Delivery 10 I could not quite fully trust that she was as committed to our relationship as I was. I was afraid I did not quite meet her expectations. Sometimes at night, next to her, I had bad dreams, often involving being abandoned in a desert, or searching for family in…
Souls Need a Gentle Touch (An Archaic Concept of Me)
Where we left it at end of previous delivery:Our married life had begun. Summer turned into Autumn. I continued with my freelance work at home, Aleena commuted to her office most days, the leaves fell down around our little front garden, and slowly winter returned. Souls Need a Very, Very Gentle Touch Now that we…
The Wedding (An Archaic Concept of Me, Delivery 9)
We began in Delivery 1 with a vignette. A vignette of lingering kisses, stillness and soft murmurings, bountiful cushions on a big, round mahogany bed, privilege taken for granted, and lithe young minds congratulating each other on their own manifestations of abundance. A vignette delivered to us by a much older version of a young man…
An Archaic Concept of Me: Mutual Proposal
We are moving into Delivery 8, where we discover more about the early adult life of the fictional characters, Aleena and Stuart. If you prefer to read contiguously from the opening sentence forward, here are links to the previous 7 deliveries onto 2 Rules of Writing. https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/an-archaic-concept-of-me/ https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/an-archaic-concept-of-me-2/ https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/to-the-future-where-we-know-ourselves/ https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/archaic-concept-of-me-keep-going-son/ https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/mindfulness-archaic-concept-5/ https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/archaic-concept-of-me-shoulder-energy/ https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/forget-it-an-archaic-concept-of-me-delivery-7/ Where we began,…
“Forget it” (An Archaic Concept of Me: Delivery 7)
A Moment of Authory* Self-Reflection Some months back, Iʼm half way through writing the book before I notice almost all of it is internal narrative of the main character. I had been considering going back to edit it towards more external action, and less dominated by early-adult thought-angst of not fitting in. But then I…