Tag: journal
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Journal Writing 2
The one thing about keeping a journal–your subconscious leaks onto the page. That is, if you let it, which you should. This means dealing with disturbing images, notions, thoughts that come and you don’t know why. Unwelcome thoughts, perhaps. But the one who is a committed journal writer will allow that to happen, will even…
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A Weaponry of Journals
I’m dipping into my journals in order to write about writing, looking for the notes on old manuscripts to see what tricks of the trade I’ve used through the years. It’s an interesting journey, to read what you wrote twenty-five, thirty years ago. It’s not always pretty; a journal is the place we turn to,…
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Careful, who you read your journal to…
In the middle of writing the first notes for the novel The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, I recorded the above dream. My son Ben had been born two months previous. He was our last of four children, and my mind had focused on that—the youngest. There was a brittle feeling about it, though…
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Fiction: Outlines
Outlines can be dicey, to say the least. Here’s my first fear: if I write out an entire outline for a story, will I feel forced to stick with it, even though the narrative might be going another way? Because, if things are really grooving, and you’re in the zone for weeks at a time,…
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First Notes on the Novel
According to my journals, I wrote the first notes for my novel The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones on August 2, 1996. “No title yet,” I wrote, “but it’s about the summer of 1978.” Oh, I remember that summer; it was illicit, a little risky, and it woke me up to life. Eighteen years…