The Late Bloomer at 56
At 1:38 a.m. today, I turned 56 years old. The thing is, I don’t feel fifty-six. Maybe this is because, for the past ten years,…
3,697 Days (and Counting)
For over ten years, or 3,697 days to be exact, I’ve been working on a novel about teens in the 1980s. The novel eventually became…
Climbers on Mt. Everest at the base of the Hillary Step.
It Always Seems Impossible Until It’s Done
Greetings, Dear Reader. I’m dictating this blog entry while walking on my treadmill, so please excuse me if I ramble or my “smart” phone substitutes…
Another Draft Bites the Dust
A month ago, I finished the third draft of what I’m calling my “teen epic.” Between December 2023 and the end of April 2024, I…
Livin’ the Dream
A couple weeks ago, I finished the second draft of the third episode (or volume) of the epic-length novel I’ve been writing for seven years.…
Aloneness
Lately, more than ever, I’ve been thinking about a quote by the late, great playwright Sam Shepard: “Aloneness is a condition of writing. You look…
The Social Distancing Champion Thrives in the Pandemic
I have a T‑shirt with a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald on it. The quote reads, “You don’t write because you want to say something.…
The Post-Social Media Novelist
It’s only been a week since I “deactivated” my personal Facebook account and already I feel like a great weight has been lifted off my…
Backstory: The Story Behind The Perfect Triple Threat
The idea for The Perfect Triple Threat, a collection of three Dakota Stevens mystery novellas, didn’t come to me all at once. Rather, the book…
Backstory: The Story Behind A Truth Stranger Than Fiction
WARNING: This entry contains spoilers about the novel A Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Continue reading at your own risk! Most of my mystery novels, and…
Chris Orcutt’s Favorite Short Stories
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the backstory of my short story collection The Man, The Myth, The Legend, explaining what was happening in my…
On the Virtues of Being Able to Write Anywhere
Compared to other novelists I know or have read about, I’m something of an anomaly: I’m a novelist who can write just about anywhere. While…
Backstory: The Story Behind the Second Dakota Stevens mystery, The Rich Are Different — Part 2
Last week, in Part 1 of the story behind The Rich Are Different, I described my experiences during 9/11 in Manhattan and the months following, and…
Writing in Asian Restaurants
I’m writing this blog entry in one of my favorite Asian restaurants: Momiji in Rhinebeck, NY. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve been writing…
My Prodigiously Convoluted Yet Miraculously Productive Low-Tech Writing Process — Part 2 — With a Few Modest Writing Secrets
In the first installment of this piece, I described the first half of my writing process: Writing the first draft in longhand or on a…
My Prodigiously Convoluted Yet Miraculously Productive Low-Tech Writing Process — Part 1
I’m writing this blog entry on my latest piece of low-tech equipment, an Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter. All told, I now have six typewriters: •…
Backstory: The Story Behind Perpetuating Trouble
The opening sentence of Perpetuating Trouble is absolutely true: “I was told to write this book by a pair of alien girls.” That incident with…
Being a Novelist Isn’t a Job, It’s a Lifestyle
Back in December, after having completed the first draft of a 550,000-word, 1,600-page novel, I took a nearly month-long vacation (my first in years). For…
Perpetuating Trouble: I’m Livin’ the Dream! Or Am I?
I’m pleased to announce the release of my personal memoir about the writing life, Perpetuating Trouble. I’ve been working on this book on and off since…
Procrastination as a Rarefied Art Form
A brief excerpt from my new humorous memoir, coming out this fall: I can’t speak for all blocked writers, but when I’m blocked, I seek…
The Role of Scaffolding in Writing a Long Novel
I’m currently 250,000 words into a novel that looks like it will go to 300,000 words. It could go as long as one of my…
WANTED: A 21st Century Author Promoter
I love writing. I love sitting down with half a dozen fresh Blackwing 602 pencils, sharpening them to a razor edge and filling up pages…
New Year, New Work
Back in December I released the latest installment in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series, The Perfect Triple Threat. I spent most of December and part of…
The Writer with the Master Number Clears the Deck
Two years ago, when I released the 3rd Dakota Stevens installment, I read one of those rare books that gave me a much-needed kick in…
Only Have Time for Essentials
“At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.” — Virginia Woolf, diary, 3/22/1928 I stumbled upon this quotation earlier this week.…
Why This 2016 Writer is Going to the Woods
When Henry David Thoreau went to the woods by Walden Pond in Concord, Mass. in 1845, he had his own, somewhat convoluted, reasons for doing…
Paying Attention as a Fiction Writer
I have been writing fiction since I was 13 years old, when I first read Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger and was swept away not only by the…
Why I Write a PI Series
I wasn’t going to write the latest Dakota Stevens mystery. Back in June of last year, at a reading I gave from my then-new pastoral novel…
The Next Dakota Stevens Mystery is Done
IT’S DONE. After 90,000 words, 6 drafts, endless polishing, and countless tweaks, spell-checks and fact-checks, the next Dakota Stevens mystery, A Truth Stranger Than Fiction,…
Me and My Montblanc
This is the very short story of a man and his pen. Around 1988, when I went to college to study philosophy, my forward-thinking uncle,…
When Your Fetal Book Starts to Kick
Since mid-June, I’ve been earnestly at work on the third Dakota Stevens mystery novel, but it wasn’t until last week that I felt the fetus…
To All So-Called Authors: Stop Doing This; You Look Like Idiots
Maybe I shouldn’t be giving away my writing secrets. Maybe I should be like Ernest Hemingway, who, with the exception of a couple of Paris…
A Successful Interview with Pam Stack on Authors on the Air
This evening, I did my first-ever LIVE radio interview, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. Host Pam Stack asked me some thought-provoking…
A Written Interview with Authors in the Spotlight with Lucie Dunn
In my blog post yesterday, I mentioned my upcoming internet radio interview with Pam Stack, host of Authors on the Air, on Wed., April 30…
My Upcoming Interview with Authors on the Air Host Pam Stack
On Wednesday, April 30 at 8:00 p.m. EST, I’m being interviewed LIVE on Authors on the Air with host Pam Stack. Besides my new novel, One…
A Short Documentary on Why I Write in Pencil
Back in February, my documentary filmmaker friend Jason Scott created a short documentary about me any my use of pencils for writing first drafts. The…
Long Walk Brings Writing Epiphany
Today, for the first time in weeks, I took a walk. A long walk. I put on my coat and my Boston Red Sox cap,…
My Radio Interview on “Murders, Mysteries and Mayhem”
Today my interview on the Murders, Mysteries and Mayhem program (part of the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network) aired, and it was a…
The Adventure of the Sherlock Holmes Aficionado
Thanks to the thousands of readers of my Dakota Stevens mysteries, in the past 18 months I’ve been able to fulfill two lifelong dreams. The…
Everything That’s Wrong With Ebooks
So I was browsing Kindle books on Amazon earlier today and came upon one that thoroughly pissed me off. Truly, this book represents everything that’s…
Two Ideas to Get You Through (The 1st Draft)
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you already know that I began writing the third installment in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series last…
Dakota Stevens #3: Starting from Scratch
While writing the first two books in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series—A Real Piece of Work and The Rich Are Different—I kept notebooks of other plot…
My Writing Secret Weapon
For as long as I’ve been writing—over 20 years professionally now—I’ve collected articles on writing, handwritten snatches from books on writing, examples from great authors,…
Engaging Novels About a Detective
The other day, after publishing the second novel in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series—The Rich Are Different—I pulled a giant plastic crate labeled “Dakota Stevens…
Rewriting The Rich Are Different
While in the post office the other day, a couple of postal workers who bought A Real Piece of Work complimented me on the writing.…
Writing vs. Self-Promotion
The big problem facing writers today is finding a balance between writing and self-promotion. I’m currently doing a free promotion of my Kindle mystery novel,…
A Shattered Paradigm
I have read hundreds of books on writing. Conservatively figuring an average of 15 per year, over 24 years that makes 360 books on the…
The Dilemma of the 21st Century Writer
I had big plans for this blog entry. BIG plans. When I originally envisaged this piece, it was going to be a 5,000-word polemic on…
Burning Your Ships
A while back, I got in an online argument with another writer. He was proffering financial advice to writers, in effect saying this: “I made…
Index Cards Are Sexy
I’d like to share some thoughts about index cards. My new writing, with the exception of blog entries of course, is happening on index cards. The…
The Pencil Twitter
Quite a while ago, my good friend Jason started a Twitter feed about his cat, Sockington. The feed has not only become extremely popular, with over…
Preparing for Success: An Addendum
Today I opened my email and found a lovely note from a fellow writer, La Belette Rouge. She wrote to tell me that a blog…
What the Hell Kind of Nest am I Building Here?
“All I know is that at a very early stage of the novel’s development I get this urge to garner bits of straw and…
Abraham Lincoln, Writer
He didn’t go to a fancy Eastern college. In fact, Abraham Lincoln had virtually no formal education at all. However, his study of the Bible…
The Creative Tension Imperative (NOT Kant’s Categorical Imperative, thank God)
Back in 2000-01, when this blog phenomenon began to take off, my dear friend Jason Scott Sadofsky encouraged me to start one of my own.…
Surprise Causes Writer to Choke on Big Mac
The first time I read John Irving’s The World According to Garp, I choked on a Big Mac. It was a cold March day 15…
Shut Up, Hemingway
“Writing is rewriting.” — Ernest Hemingway Yeah, yeah, I know the story about the last chapter of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms—that he…
Polishing
I’m in the middle of polishing my latest novel, and because I find the process so onerous, I’ve decided to take a break from it…
What the Hell Are Syntactic Slots?
Yesterday I alluded to John Gardner’s book on writing, The Art of Fiction, and casually mentioned syntactic slots. Since then, I’ve received a few emails…
Love Makes Me Write, Not Self-Discipline
I never get sick. I mean never. The last time I was sick was three years ago with a cold, and just before that, a…
The Only Thing You Can Control
Toiling away on index cards has a way of putting things in perspective. Whether you’re hunched over a cubicle deep in your local library, or…
The Masters of Narrative Drive
Over the past year, I’ve become obsessed with the writers of paperback noir/crime/sleaze novels from the late 40s through the 60s. Having now read at…
Cutting
No, I’m not referring to the sick practice of using razor blades on myself—although there have been times when I’ve been tempted to. I’m talking…
His Pen Was Quick
On July 17, Mickey Spillane, creator of the infamous Mike Hammer PI series, died. He was 88, and by all accounts he lived a pretty cool life.
In addition to writing several bestselling novels that readers adored, Spillane played a mystery writer on the 70s TV show Columbo, appeared in several commercials for Miller Lite beer, and married a hot second wife, Sherri Manilou, who posed for the cover of his novel The Erection Set.