Category Archives: Writing Research

Thinking About Thinking

I’ve had a chance to do a lot of thinking lately. Okay, technically we think all of the time. I mean creative thinking. After being a bad master for a number of years, I’ve started to walk the dog for a half an hour or so on most days, and having nothing to clutter my [...]

Breaking the Rules

Okay, I’ve been writing about Writer’s Rules on and off since firing up this blog in 2002. What about when the time comes to break the rules? Depends on what rules you break. For example, I’m planning a novel in which nobody gets killed. For me that’s a definite leap forward. I’ve got one friend [...]

Secret Agent Man

When I was a kid, possibly under the influence of The Man From U.N.C.L.E, I wanted to be a spy. I even did my own amateur spying and code breaking projects, some of which got me into trouble. I didn’t handle the being caught or almost-caught part very well, so I rethought the whole spy [...]

Saving Trust

For some odd reason, my daughter recently brought home a book from the library called I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby. It’s a history of the tabloids by Bill Sloan, who spent a good deal of his career writing for them. I’m not a tab reader, but I’ve long been fascinated by them [...]

Research II

Richard Simmons’ Dalmatians or Madonna’s Chihuahua? What is an unusual medical condition that would typically be found in an ostrich? These are the things that sometimes occupy the mind of a writer. I needed a celebrity pet tonight and went poking around on the Internet. For some reason, it struck me as the kind of [...]

Research

Back writing again, with only a brief pause to jump onto the ‘net to look up skin diseases. I do a lot of research on the fly like that, especially with a novel like this where a lot of travel is involved. I think my wife wonders why I’m always buying road atlases, but one [...]

Outline Work

Tonight was Parent/Teacher Conferences, postponing for the umpteenth time my guitar night with Randy. I am quite happy writing at the moment and haven’t felt pressed to play recently, but I miss it, and I miss getting together with Randy… so perhaps next week. Meantime, there’s an Alvarez in the bedroom that no doubt feels [...]

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