That’s What You Get for Eavesdropping

Eavesdropping

On my latest trip to Boston, I had a somewhat unusual experience. First, I was in a cafe where a woman was sitting with a bunch of her girlfriends chatting. I’d say she was in her sixties, which I mention because it makes the story more interesting. And she was talking about a vacation she … Read more

Guilt Trips and Guilty Trippers

Guilttrip

I’m realizing something about people who do guilt trips. You know, situations where you’re feeling guilty because the other person gave you a guilt trip about wanting what you want or doing what you want to do. A guilt trip is different from someone saying, “Hey, I don’t like what you did!” It’s passive aggressive … Read more

Let’s all Irrationally Overreact. It’s in Style.

Video Recording

I recently got into big trouble. It was a case of what I have come to call the Amateur Terrorist Posse of Do-Gooding Vigilantes. ATP-DGV. I’ll have to think of a better acronym, and soon. Ok, I was on the NextDoor app. This is an app for people that live in the same town to … Read more

Ayahuasca and Addiction

jigsaw puzzle

In this, the third blog about my Ayahuasca experience, there will continue to be no talk of swirly psychedelic images or seeing the faces of one’s ancestors. People writing about Ayahuasca often claim such things happen, and all I can say is… whatever, dude. Neither I nor anyone else I talked to from my ceremony … Read more

“The Writing Life” (such as it is)

"passion led us" written on sidewalk beside two pairs of feet

Someone I just met the other day asked me what it was like to live “the writing life.” I tried not to laugh out loud. He made it sound like I must be holed up in a sleazy hotel room someplace “on the road,” with a portable typewriter, slugging scotch out of the bottle and raving about my childhood traumas. The answer is, it’s a beautiful thing to be able to challenge your imagination every day, pushing it further, forcing it to perform. It’s also scary, because your paycheck depends upon your ability to do this, and the imagination is a notoriously uncooperative thing. Then, of course, there’s the issue or marketing oneself, which I used to think was a thing you could hire someone else to do, but no. I can’t hire someone else to write my blogs can I? When my writing is the very thing that defines my work? So, I entered the world of blogging and I found that I liked it. It’s my warm up every morning. Sometimes, it’s my cool down at night, too. So the marketing life has turned out to be a pretty interesting addition to the writing life. The best part about it is having an audience and being able to reach out to them.

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Building Suspense, Now and in the Apocalypse

hand holding a gun

Let’s talk about suspense. A lot of memoir writers I consult with, as well as my ghostwriting clients, are interested in building suspense into their memoirs. Who wouldn’t want to? Suspense is the very thing that makes a book a real page-turner. Suspense makes a beach read what it is, makes a mystery novel mysterious, and makes you turn down invitations to parties so you can stay home and finish that incredible science fiction book. A lot of people think writers build suspense by creating a lot of plot complications, but that is not actually how it’s done. The level of suspense in a book depends entirely upon what’s at stake. For instance, post apocalyptic science fiction is going through a supposed “golden age” right now. So let’s ask ourselves–after the apocalypse, what’s at stake? Only the fate of the entire human race. Well, that’s about as high as stakes can get.

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Telling Stories about Failure

neon sign: people fail forward to success

I binge-watched the entire third season of Orange is the New Black. If you don’t know, it’s a TV series on Netflix about a women’s prison. Kind of a dramedy. The first couple of seasons were fun, but typical TV fodder–stories about peoples’ lives–their betrayals, loves, and ways of finding meaning in life. But in this season it seems like the writers doubled down and really went for it, making a serious statement about the for-profit prison industry in America. To me, this is the kind of writing that exemplifies why storytelling is important. Stories, told well, can make a statement without ever outright saying, “Here is what’s wrong with the world.”

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