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…
Tag: fiction
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…
Storyteller… Replaced (The Dr. M Chronicles)
Well… I’ve been replaced as storyteller. Or, at least, it’s only a matter of time. My nephew, Dr. M, lives in Bangalore with his parents. Anuja and her mother live nearby. I call him once a week to tell him a story. The time zones work out so that it’s midnight my time, but I…
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…
The Fourth Wall (Caturday)
Big Cat, Little Cat: The Fourth Wall Was the Fourth Wall Always There? Back in my dissertatin’ days, one of my particular interests was: the occasions on which an epic poet talks in the first person. You might say: times when the poet breaks the fourth wall. For example, the way Homer does at the…
Writing Fiction: Learning to Say “I Can”
About two years ago, fueled by COVID and general upheaval in my life, I started writing again. Writing was something I’d loved doing. Until I let someone into my life who destroyed my confidence in so many ways. And, as a result, I stopped doing things that brought me joy. That was almost twenty-five years…
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…
NaNoWriMo: Conflict (Caturday)
Big Cat, Little Cat Feeling Conflicted about Conflict I find that establishing and escalating conflict is the hardest thing to do for a new writer. Picture it: you’ve got your setting and it’s a good’n. It’s somewhere familiar to you, either based on the place where you grew up or on somewhere you’ve been that…
NaNoWriMo Tips: Overcoming Obstacles.
My credential for writing this is that I have written the manuscript for one novel and it has not been published. You don’t necessarily want to hear from someone who has written (and published) half a dozen or more books and is now summarizing their craft. Leastwise I don’t. When famous authors say some version…