"Children's book author" is not something I aspired to put on my resume. It never crossed my mind. Not once. But then, one night, I wrote a poem. It was November 29, 2021. A Monday. We had just wrapped up a long holiday week. My wife's family visited us for several days, culminating in a… Continue reading How I wrote my children’s book
Category: Writing
A one-hour brain dump
It's almost 9:30pm on a Sunday night. I haven't posted here in about a month. Tonight, for the first time in a while, I feel like blogging. So I'm going to write for an hour, straight through with very minimal editing, and wrap up at about 10:30pm. It's now the end of September. The statewide… Continue reading A one-hour brain dump
Three early observations about writing a novel
I'll state the obvious first: it actually is as hard as you think. When I began this process around around this time last year, I told myself not to overthink it. I was going to write a novel, simple as that. I wasn't going to agonize over plot lines and details. I wasn't going to… Continue reading Three early observations about writing a novel
Origin story of my protagonist’s wife
Here's the result of another exercise. My protagonist's wife, Jo, will play a big role in the novel and I needed to figure out what she stands for. The first thing she noticed was the smell. It was dusty and sweet, like a rotting peach. She yawned as the staff ushered her to the front… Continue reading Origin story of my protagonist’s wife
My first protagonist’s origin story
In case you weren't aware, about a year ago I started writing a novel. It's bound to be a tragedy. In the end, my protagonist will die a lonely death. Readers will know this upfront; the opening scene is his terminal cancer diagnosis. There's a lot more to it, of course, and I've read Story… Continue reading My first protagonist’s origin story
If I could redo all of my content marketing
If I could redo all of my content marketing, from every company I've ever worked on, I would keep this single, simple mantra in mind: The content you publish should feel like you're giving a gift. I certainly don't feel that about everything I've published. Perhaps the closest I've gotten to that is the book… Continue reading If I could redo all of my content marketing
I wrote 17K words in just two days
I’m surprised that I want to write this. I’ve written more in the last two days than I’ve probably written in the last year. And yet here I am, sitting across from the wood-burning fire in my fancy room at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, itching to write more. The last two days were my… Continue reading I wrote 17K words in just two days