Dream-Writing

For the last several weeks, I’ve had dreams that I write really awful gangster stories. They somehow turned into novels, plays, and movie scripts, too. They contained the elements of story that I had been trained to look for, care about: functional dialogue, plot, three-dimensional characters, change. These stories were nothing typical of anything I’d ever write. And when I say that they were bad, I mean...

Today Was a Shining Success; Today Was a Spectacular Failure

I write a little every day, without hope, without despair—Isak Dinesen What’s scary isn’t the writing, it’s living with the writing. I’m afraid that if I say, Today is day one, Today we are beginning the life of Writing This Book, that I’ll fail before I even get started. I’ve failed before. I have many excuses, so many reasons to put it to the side: my kid, my job, my other job, my other other job,...