How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

I could have picked any one of a hundred songs by Paul Simon to write about; he is, without question, one of the best songwriters of his generation (or any other). Not only is he incredibly prolific, but he's also incredibly creative--while some songwriters end up sounding the same over the years,* Paul Simon always sounds like himself, but never sounds the same. His songs aren't brothers--they're cousins to each other. So, I could have picked any one of them. "Graceland." "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover." "Bridge Over Troubled Water." "You Can Call Me Al." You get the picture. But right now I'm loving "Late In The Evening" best for primarily two reasons: (1) the samba beat, because seriously, what's better than a pop song with a samba beat? Name one thing (that's not a food). There's no way to listen to "Late In The Evening" without doing a little bounce in your chair. It's impossible, like...

The divine Miss Moonrat has a post here describing the plight of the Overwriter . You know this person--the one who never uses "red" when he can use "crimson," the one whose never met an adverb that she didn't love, the one whose dialogue doesn't sound like anything you've ever heard anybody say, ever, and that includes in historical romances. The whole post is well worth reading, but my favorite part, and the one I am most merciless on myself about, is the part about dialogue tags. This is what Moonrat has to say: It's ok to use the word "said," even if you use it more than once. Really. You can just say "Jackie said" instead of "Jackie sneered jeeringly" or "Jackie continued her bombastic harangue, her outraged grimace flickering as a sympathetic smirk fought its way to the surface." Repeat after me: WORDS SPEAK LOUDER THAN DIALOGUE TAGS. heh . As Omar would say "indeed."* I almost always use...

1. Dear Charmin - You know what will not sell your toilet paper? Cartoons of bear butts with little pieces of toilet paper stuck all over them. I appreciate the particular feature of your product you're trying to sell, there, but that image is too gross even in cartoon form to get me to do anything but change the channel.* 2. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The Wire is a really good show. Like, unbelievably good. If it were a different kind of show, it would be better than My So-Called Life , but it's not, so it's not. That's right, you heard it here first: The Wire is almost as good as My So-Called Life.** 3. Today I had to do a list of projects that I'm working on for Agent Ted (we're getting ready to start submitting The Book, so he wanted to see what I'm up to w/r/t future projects). I really only focus on one project at a time, but I have little fledgling ideas waiting their turn in line. But actually seeing the line, see...

Congratulations to author (and friend) Cinda Chima , who was named one of Most Interesting People of 2009 by Cleveland Magazine. Having known her for over a year now, I can say that Cinda is not only interesting, but also nice, which is an unusual combination.* Oh, and she's talented. Check it out . I know! If I didn't like her so much, I'd have to hate her. ~~~ * My mother has a saying: "You can be nice, or you can be interesting. You choose." People who are both, in my experience, are very rare.

Over at Bookends, LLC , Jessica has a post in which she responds to a question about how she matches writers to editors. The questioner asks whether she thinks about the personalities in play and she says, in part: I debated saying this, but I’m not sure it’s my job to judge who a client can get along with. This is a business, not a dating service. Ideally I would like to find an editor who is perfect, who can please my author in every way and who my client can get along with beautifully, but editors are people too, and frankly, I don’t always know how an editor is going to act or treat a client until we’re in the midst of a relationship. I was surprised that this would be an issue. It never occurred to me that people would be worried about whether they would get along with their editors or not. Of course, like every writer, I anticipate that there can be issues between the editor and writer, where the editor wants changes and the writer doesn't want them, or the writer wants t...

Happy New Year, and welcome to my first blog post of 2009! ... I thought I would have more to say about that, but I don't. I hope you haven't broken your resolutions just yet. My resolution this year was to give up New Year's resolutions. So far, it's going pretty well. :) I'm not a huge Stevie Wonder fan. Don't get me wrong--Stevie Wonder is great, right? He's a great singer and a great performer and, probably, a great guy.* But my clearest memory of Stevie Wonder's musical prowess is from the 80s, when he was know for two things: (1) "Stay Gold" the cheesy song at the end of the The Outsiders movie,** and (2) "We Are The World." Neither of these particular songs impressed little proto -goth, New Romantic, Brit Punk baby Jay back then.*** So while I admitted the song writing/performing genius of Stevie Wonder, I never actually felt it, you know. It was a truth universally acknowledged, but irrelevant.**** Then I saw High F...

One of the things that I am fairly good at is taking advice.* This is not a skill that came naturally to me when I was a younger writer. Like many writers, I suspect, I was one of the best in my class. In all my classes up to and including law school. So when someone presumed to tell me how my writing could be improved, I probably reacted much like the kid that Maya Reynolds just tried to help here . Go take a look; I'll wait. His mistakes, as Maya points out, are ones fairly common for young writers used to being praised. Maybe he thinks that he's being cute and clever by explaining away all of Maya's issues, or maybe he just thinks she's wrong, but either way, he's ticked off not just Maya, but me. As she points out, it's rude and insulting to defend your manuscript against someone who has offered to help you improve your writing. I don't know how I became comfortable with the process of receiving criticism. I don't remember a particular event ...