by Jim | Aug 21, 2023 | Blog
There is actually a debate going on, among writers of all people, as to whether it’s useful to re-write history’s greatest works in order to protect the ‘sensibilities’ of readers. Those who come down on the side of ‘sensibility editors’ seem to feel it’s damaging to...
by Jim | Aug 21, 2023 | Blog
David Suzuki writes that ‘Despair Is a Luxury We Can’t Afford’. As a writer, I love the words he chose on a subject we haven’t seen get much traction. It’s almost the polar opposite of my writing, that claims we are short on despair and long on kicking cans down the...
by Jim | Aug 21, 2023 | Blog
The low-stakes argument “It’s tempting,” he writes, “and fun to argue about the logo. About the way the toilet paper is hung. About how to load the trunk of the car. “These sorts of arguments work precisely because they don’t matter. At all. “And they distract us from...
by Jim | Aug 3, 2023 | Blog
A word about protecting your protagonist from the dislike, even hatred of readers. There are many books where this is exactly the point and they were written with this in mind, often to great success. Think about Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho” by...
by Jim | Aug 1, 2023 | Blog
We are story tellers, we writers and maybe it’s time to get comfortable with that. It sounds so old-timey, firesides and marshmallows, the air thick with fireflies and we are grown up now, drowning in information, too sophisticated for a long, drawn out adventure just...