Month: December 2017
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You Don’t Have to Have a Merry Christmas
The darkest evening of the year was yesterday, though for most people, it was just the longest evening of the year. Winter solstice. The shortest day. Here, in L.A., dusk came along around 4:30. That’s too soon for me. Going to bed has, for nearly forty years, been a reckoning with the shadow that comes…
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The Craters of Our Lives
Our couch came with craters installed underneath each cushion. Sit on it, and your rump plummets. The cushion caves in. You sink, your knees are as high as your forehead. You have to peer around them to watch TV. I pile three pillows together to sit. And still I sink. Lesson: don’t buy cheap-ass furniture.…
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The Things They Tell You Not to Write About
Our morning begins with the clack of the walker’s brakes a wall away from where I sit here writing—that specific clunk of two handles lifted to release the wheels. But for her, it began an hour ago, waking up, looking at the ceiling of her bedroom, deciding whether or not to rise. It’s a painful…
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Marketing your novel: The Query Letter
Don’t spend two years writing the Great American Novel and two weeks marketing it. It’s time to look at your novel differently: it is no longer your little baby, your creation, your Precious. It is now a product. Treat it as such; this professional mindset might help a little, when you start getting rejections. Which…
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Writers: Keep Your Day Job
When I tell someone that I’ve finished writing a novel, sometimes they ask, “So, when’s it coming out?” They know I have a number of novels already published. In their minds, I am an established writer, and each novel I produce ultimately goes to market. This ain’t the case, at all. The writing world is…