Search Results: resistance
For part of my time in Hollywood, I worked with a partner. I called him “Stanley” in Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t so I’ll continue that protocol here. Stanley was an established writer. He had been the force behind two big hits. I was the junior member of the team. Stanley was also a major sci-fi enthusiast. He had read all the magazines, the short stories, the novels, the collections. One of the ways Stanley developed movie projects (he was a producer too) was to option a short story or novella by, say, Philip K. Dick and then…
Read MoreI’m gonna get this quote wrong, I’m sure. It’s from Kierkegaard, as cited somewhere (in The Moviegoer, I think) by Walker Percy:
Read MoreI’m a few years and thousands of pages into a project—and am starting over. I had an “all is lost moment.” It hit around the time Steve published his first “From the Trenches” article. I cried. I sulked. I said something shitty to my husband. I thought my world was falling apart—that everything that could go wrong had, or did, or soon would. I was wrong. I’m alive. I’m working. I’m healthy. Most important: My kids and husband are healthy and doing their amazing things. What helped me hurdle the moment? Steve #2. In his “Resistance at the Ph.D. Level” article,…
Read MoreThe last two weeks’ posts have gotten a lot of positive response, so apparently they have struck a nerve. I confess though, as I sit down to write today’s Report #3, that I’m not really sure exactly WHAT is proving so helpful. Obviously I want to stay in that vein. So, spitballing a bit, here goes … The specific question readers might be asking right about now is, What exactly did Shawn’s notes say? And, How exactly did you, Steve, respond? The bulk of Shawn’s problem with the manuscript I gave him was that I had violated conventions of…
Read MoreI have no tears left to cry nor emotions to feel. Instead of the heart keeping beat, the pounding in the gut plays metronome, a solid BOOM, BOOM, BOOM walloping the soul. It doesn’t hurt, but Pain has numbed me. I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to be back in my childhood room having a terrible two’s temper tantrum. I want to throw every stuffed animal, and book, and everything else I can get my hands on against the wall. But I can’t. I’m an adult. I have kids. I have a husband. I have work.…
Read MoreI’m gonna take a break in this series on Villains and instead open up my skull and share what’s going on in my own work right now. It ain’t pretty. I’m offering this post in the hope that an account of my specific struggles at this moment will be helpful to other writers and artists who are dealing with the same mishegoss, i.e. craziness, or have in the past, or will in the future. Here’s the story: Eighteen months ago I had an idea for a new fiction piece. I did what I always do at such moments: I…
Read MoreSuppose you, an aspiring writer (or even an established one), got the chance to have a two-hour lunch with Stephen King? How much would that be worth? If you had to put a dollar figure on it, how much would you pay to have that experience? What price would make it fair to Stephen King for the expenditure of his time, for permitting you access to his wisdom? What would it be worth to you, just to hang out with the master of horror over a cheeseburger and fries? Or … Suppose you were a young architect and you…
Read MoreYou were born for adversity. It’s in your DNA as much as it’s in the DNA of a shark or an eagle or a lion. You were made for hard times. The species of Homo sapiens has survived and prevailed not because we are faster or stronger than all the competing creatures. Every one of them is better equipped by nature with fangs and claws and wings and fur. Every one is better adapted to hunt, to kill, to survive drought and heat and cold. Yeah, our race has a better brain. And yes, we figured out the advantages…
Read MoreA few years ago I wrote a book called Killing Rommel. Killing Rommel is a novel set during WWII in the North Africa campaign. Its heroes are the men of the Long Range Desert Group, a true historical British commando unit that fought behind the lines against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the German Afrika Korps. The first time I heard the name Long Range Desert Group, I fell in love with it. I said to myself, “I don’t know what this is, but I gotta write a book about it.” “Long Range.” Way cooler that Short Range. Even…
Read MoreMy first agent was a gentleman named Barthold Fles. He was seventy years old. When I fictionalized him in The Knowledge, I made him ninety-six. But he was really seventy. I was twenty-nine at the time, so Bart had me by forty-one years. He was Swiss. He had represented Bertolt Brecht and even Carl Jung. He had seen and done everything. One day Bart said to me, “How much is 427 minus one?” I gave the obvious answer: 426. “No,” said Bart. “It’s zero.” He was speaking about pages in a novel. If the full book is…
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