American Novelist
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, I’ve been writing about characters 16–17 years old and some of their sense of invincibility has rubbed off on me. All I know is, it really doesn’t seem possible that … Read more
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 incorrect homophones (e.g., “there, their, they’re”). As you’ll soon read, I have a lot going on and need to multitask. I think it’s been over a year since I last … Read more
About five months ago, I bought a countdown clock that sits directly below my computer monitor, and for 157 days it’s been ticking down. It’s been ticking down to my self-imposed deadline for the second draft of my behemoth epic novel (a series, actually). Last December, I set a deadline for myself: I would finish … Read more
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 at all the writers that have come up with something worth its own salt, and they’re utterly alone.” “Aloneness is a condition of writing.” I’ve come not just to accept, … Read more
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. You write because you have something to say.” This is the reason why I so seldom write blog entries: because I usually don’t have anything to say. Well, now that … Read more
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 favorite novels, Anna Karenina. Since my longest published novel to date (A Truth Stranger Than Fiction) is only 90,000 words, the novel-in-progress will likely end up being three times as long. … Read more
