Gifts for writers and would-be writers from the Gotham Writer’s Workshop. Anyone want to contend that The Writer magazine is better than Writer’s Digest or vice versa?

Mr. Bertrand writes, “A story is not a bag of potato chips. I don’t want to rip it open and get a face-full of air. It should be full to bursting. The beginning shouldn’t present a yawning void and a glimpse of substance near the bottom. Instead, I want it to spill everywhere, to get all over everything, to untidy my life for as long as it takes to get to the end.”

To the untried writer, John Milton says, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”

To which the modern would-be writer replies, “Word up.”

“Is writing short stories first a good way to start ‘breaking into’ writing novels?” Author S.L. Farrell tries to answer this one with many commenters joining in. Farrell says short stories and novels are different. “You don’t learn to play piano by learning to play guitar,” he says. (via Jason Sanford, who is blogging on sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery now)

By his own admission, Michael Snyder doesn’t know anything and yet he writes.

A lady at the library turned to me out of the blue today and asked what I might recommend that she and her husband listen to on a long trip. I thought if I asked a few clarifying questions that I might be able to help her out. It didn’t work. She knew less than I did. That made me feel pretty good. I wondered if I could write about that encounter. Turns out I can’t.

He believes loving your characters is better than actually knowing something to write about. Read on.

Sent a new column to The American Spectator Online last night. I’d thought the piece a lost effort, an orphan, but it was saved, oddly enough, by a prominent Democrat.

I’d written this timely column in response to a news story with Christian implications which raised a fair stink last month. But by the time I got it into something resembling a publishable form, the editor (and with him the world) had moved on to new and better things.

That’s why I don’t generally do topical columns. I have the greatest respect for those people who can watch a new story developing on CNN, do quick research on the net, and have a polished opinion ready the following morning.

Me, I generally don’t even know what I think for the first couple days. And if I come up with some kind of encephalogram worth transcribing, I’ve got to

A) Compose a first draft.

B) Revise and cut.

C) Revise and cut some more.

D) Put the thing away for a month to get some emotional distance on it.

E) Forget all about it.

F) Discover it while looking for something else on my hard drive.

G) Read it over, appreciating once again how really bush league my prose is.

H) Give it another revision.

I) Put it away again.

J) Remember it once more, when I notice how low my checkbook balance has fallen.

K) Revise it again. Realize it’s hopeless.

L) Send it off anyway, on the assumption that, since I thought it was good in the first place, I must be no judge of quality.

M) Wait for publication, or rejection, whichever comes first.

N) Overeat.

That’s why I prefer to do leisurely, trivial columns on subjects like “Why the End of Analog TV Portends the Demise of Civilization as We Know It.”

In any case, the Democrat (who I’m not going to name here, since I want it to be a surprise when and if the thing gets published) raised the same issue (or an issue close enough to enable me to add it in, like an Almost-Invisible Hair Weave) the other day. I re-wrote the article and sent it off.

Now, time to overeat.

Speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we beat? . . . which we strike? Where’s that thesaurus? CAAF plays a little game with Bovary’s line.

Frank Wilson has some good thoughts in these two posts on his blog, Books, Inq.

First, on being Catholic: “One of the benefits of having been raised and educated a Catholic – at least I regard it as a benefit – is the constant awareness of my eventual death that it bestowed upon me and that I have lived with all my life.”

Second, on certain writers: “Most writers and intellectuals hang with other writers and intellectuals and project their parochial outlook onto the rest of society. That explains why so much that is written is such a bummer.” Which means you can drop your New Yorker subscription and pick up some good, non-parochial writing like Relief Journal.

After doing my TV review last night, an odd fact occurred to me. My three favorite TV shows just now are “House,” which stars Hugh Laurie (an Englishman doing an American accent), “Pushing Daisies,” which stars Anna Friel (an Englishwoman doing an American accent) and “Chuck,” starring Yvonne Strahovski (an Australian doing an American accent).

I see no significance whatever in this concatenation. But it seems odd.



Speaking of Halloween, I’ve been seeing web posts here and there about ghosts.

I don’t believe in ghosts, but that’s not a disbelief I hold to with the same fervor as I do to the great doctrines of the faith. The only appearance of a ghost in Scripture is in 1 Samuel 28 (the witch of Endor), which has been variously interpreted as a special dispensation from God or a demonic manifestation under God’s control. One way or the other, contacting the dead is unquestionably a forbidden activity.

But I’ve employed ghosts in stories several times. They’re just so darn useful as a plot device. They combine the elements of fear, grief and moral judgment. Shakespeare liked them too, and I’m not sure if he believed in them either.

Anyway, don’t take their use in my books as a statement of belief. I’ve never seen a ghost, or an ancient god, or an elf. I’ve only seen one physical miracle, in fact, and I can explain that one away if I want to. In general I believe in the supernatural in principle, but am skeptical of reported supernatural phenomena in particular cases.

Just for the record.