Productivity

oday I ran up against the nemesis called "Vision of Perfection" while I was working on my novel. VoP is a foe I have encountered before and thought I had permanently defeated, but today she showed up once again and tried to derail my work. Vision of Perfection or VoP works like this. You...

Recently I returned from a vacation of sorts. I live in the misty chill of the San Francisco Bay Area – on an island near San Francisco actually – but once a year I make a pilgrimage to Utah to ski with some high school friends from Florida. Florida and snow skiing seems a...

Beginning stories and novels is always a challenge. Most beginnings are discarded eventually. Often, these ignoble starts bear no resemblance to the final product. This difficulty is, I believe, a direct result of the writer having an unclear idea of the story and of the characters who will populate their imaginary world. Stephenie Meyer,...

Writing is something that is more than just a job for some of us… it is more of a calling. It has also been defined as a “craft”, meaning that there is a set of skills that can be learned and practiced. While this is true to an extent, the “art” of writing is...

What I am going to tell you here will be obvious to some readers, but to others, perhaps not. There are two objectives that any piece of writing has, only two, and this is true for either fiction or non-fiction. All writing exists either to: 1. Educate (self or others); and/or, 2. Entertain (self...