Posted in Writing, tagged caravan, creative writing, immigration, modern poetry, Poetry, short story, vignettes on 13 Aug 2019| 4 Comments »
August, without a doubt, is my least favorite month. It’s when the garden starts to pant and parch, spiders build massive obstacle courses in the yard, fruit goes from unripe green to fuzzy grey within minutes, and wildfire smoke descends to choke our skies, our lungs, our eyes.
And this August, it’s also when a “great” idea for a bit of topical poetry falls totally flat. (more…)
Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged building believable characters, Characters, creative writing, novel writing, setting, write what you know on 11 Jul 2019| 2 Comments »
If I were to have followed the standard advice of “write what you know” (meaning only write from personal experience), then none of my books would ever have come into being. I would never have written about anything historical (how could I, if I was born in 19-hrmahrm?), or about anything set in Brittany, or certainly I could never ever have written anything to do with dinosaurs (who could?).
The only book I’ve written that had a shred of “what I know”ishness to it is Dreams of the Desert Wind. The setting was a place I lived in for a time (Jerusalem) and I drew on a lot of personal experience for descriptions of the street scenes (like the one mentioned here, with “Samovar Man“).
No, when I started writing, if I’d written only what I knew, then I’d have written a book about working in IT (now there’s a page-turner), or something set in the world of classical music. (more…)
Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged creative writing, teaching, Writing on 23 May 2019| Leave a Comment »
A number of years ago, my neighbor expressed an interest in my books. Being the new-author-hungry-for-any-attention sort of guy, I gave her a copy of the first three books in my Fallen Cloud Saga. (No, I wasn’t being stingy; it’s all that had been published at the time.)
My neighbor never mentioned the books again—not a good sign—so, as per my usual practice, I never brought up the subject again.
Fast-forward a dozen years. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, modern poetry, Poetry, short fiction, vignettes on 26 Mar 2019| 1 Comment »
at the cliff’s edge
the earth falls
through giddy space
to clammy sands
sunlight spears the steel wool clouds
and blazes from gunmetal curls
brined winds press me back
with death-cold hands
hot anger fills me
magma of rage
ready to spew forth
and boil the sea below
as I ponder the choice between
a hateful god
slayer of the young
and no god at all
Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged creative writing, novel writing, percolation, problem solving on 14 Mar 2019| Leave a Comment »
On occasion, I ask my brain to go through its memory banks and search for something I know I know, but which I cannot at the moment remember. This search method is a technique honed by decades of living in a pre-Internet world, before Google, Wikipedia, IMDb, and all the rest.
What is her phone number? Didn’t I read a book about this subject? Who wrote that song? Where have I seen that actor before?
I got so good at this that I could do it in my sleep. Literally.
Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged creative writing, writing life, writing novels on 08 Mar 2019| 2 Comments »
It’s been a helluva week.
At work, I had all my tasks back-burnered by “walk-on” issues, I called in chits to get assistance from team members who’ve moved on to greener pastures, and I yelled at my boss in an open meeting (no profanity, and no actual “yelling,” per se, but my blood was definitely up).
At home, I tested a new recipe, answered my correspondence, got a chance to playtest a new boardgame, and (after days of back and forth texts) finally got the contractor to agree on a date to start work fixing the back stairs.
But it was my Work-In-Progress that really did me in.
I sat down with what I have written so far and the current outline, and took a look forward. Even though this novel has so far been the hardest for me to write, all indications are that the real struggle is going to be getting it up to a decent novel-length, a realization that thoroughly depressed me. I mean, it’s hard enough to sell a novel these days, but selling a thin novel is likely to be even harder.
There are thin novels out there, true, but in general they’re either classics (when the expectations of novel length were different), or they’re written by established authors. Neither of those cases pertains to me, a modern writer with only modest credits to my name. Word counts of my previous books have all been in the 90–120k range—standard for their genres—but this one looks like it’s going to be closer to 60k.
Some of you may scoff at my struggle to reach 60,000 words. “Pish tosh,” you say. “I know folks who can write 20k in a weekend.”
I know some of those writers, as well.
I am not one of those writers.
In my head, the novel already exists. I know where I’m going, I know how it will all be resolved. But I am not Zeus, and things do not sprout fully formed from my mortal noggin. Putting the words down is torturous, as my desires and my failing confidence vie in a battle royale. Even the good review the WIP got from First Reader cannot cure that malady. It’s why NaNoWriMo is such a turn-off for me; it requires a skill that, try as I might, I cannot acquire, much less master. This book especially, with its new genre and its intensely personal content, has been very difficult to write.
And yet, I want to write it. I want to finish it. I want it to be read.
I also want to sell it, so it can reach more readers than I can garner on my own, but that will be a long hill to climb.
First, though, I have to finish the damned thing.
k
Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged creative writing, novel editing, reading aloud, Seattle, The Wolf Tree, Work-in-progress, writing novels on 20 Feb 2019| 3 Comments »
This past holiday weekend, we broke with our stay-cation tradition and took a little getaway to a lovely place, a re-purposed US Army base on the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula.
But I don’t want to talk about the place, not right now. Instead, I want to share what we did while we were there. (Don’t worry, it’s SFW.)
Regular readers may have wondered what the hell is happening with my current Work-In-Progress, my dual-timeline novel set in Seattle. And you’ve had good reason to wonder. (more…)
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 