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Eleventy-Eleven-Eleven: Books by the Half-Dozen
Yeah, you're right—they were a vaudeville act in the 30s I like to show off my smarty-pants friends now and then, and this occasion brings a half-dozen ways to do it: my estimable colleague, Joel D...
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Turkey Tales and Turkey Tails: An Island Christmas
I’ve been spending time on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera for the past 7 weeks or so. “Spending time”—such a peculiar expression, as though time could be counted like pennies or pomegranates. Time...
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How Rejections Tell You to Keep Puckering Up
Yeah, but couldn't you have bought me a drink first?Trying to place an article about a man who drives nails into his scrotum is a challenge. You have to find a publication that is appropriately (or...
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The Write Tool for Working Words
The old saw, leaning by the old Airstream near the old guava tree This past couple of weekends, I’ve been pruning the trees on our property. We’ve got six or seven fruit trees, many of them upwards of...
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The Rhythm Method (Or, Why Self-Employment is Better Than, Um, Chocolate)
Today’s guest post is from the bubbling cauldron of Joel D Canfield’s mind, and he provides us with an unbridled rant—er, measured assessment—of the painful yoke of conventional employment vs the...
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Gertrude Stein’s Mustache (or Goodbye 2012)
I predict I’ll have lunch soon, and in 2013 too Much as I want to steal from Willy the Shake, and employ purple phrasings like “the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces” to map the mental...
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Chocolate Kills (But What a Way to Go)
I love to write travel pieces, from tales based on exotic sojourns to tiny islands far, far away, to “wow, look what’s right in my backyard” articles. One of the travel article forms is the service...
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Mixing Martinis, Grammar, the Past and the Future
As Magritte might have said, this is not a martini. This is the future. My parents offered me a sip of a martini when I was seven or eight years old. I recall recoiling in disgust from its sharp,...
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How Herons and Frogs Bring Zing to Your Writing
Careful—this lawn jockey can bite Last week a cousin of the fellow above flew into my neighbor’s field. It’s not that unusual to see herons in the general neighborhood—after all, I took the photo of...
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Writing Small, Thinking Big
Tiny but mighty: stand back—this is a sharpened word sword! I had a tiny piece about the Las Vegas Hangover Heaven bus published in Draft magazine the other day. Draft is highest-circulating...
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Pick Your Writing Berries When They’re Ripe
Writing Berries Have the Juiciest Syntax (Photo Credit: Wikipedia) Strawberry season is in full bore on the California coast. Today I drove back from a beach walk past fields filled with pickers,...
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Writing Contests: Yea, Nay, or Meh?
No, I didn’t get a pawnbroker to re-etch my name over the real winner’s It’s great to get published. I’ve had the good fortune to be published in lots of magazines and newspapers, and I’m grateful...
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Editing: the Big Gazoombah to the Ant’s Antennae
This guy’s so good he doesn’t even need a head to edit well Editing a book-length project is an intriguing undertaking for the sheer variety of the material an editor might see. I’ve edited both...
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Licking the Cat and Other Writing Tips
Poor cat had a midnight deadline—had to hit the hootch hard afterwards Scuttlebutt had it that Barbara Cartland, the doyenne of romance writers, did much of her early writing at the piano, stark...
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Poking the Eyes Out (At Least One) of the Green-Eyed Writing Monster
Yes, I know—it’s his face that’s green. But go with it. I occasionally guest-post over at Writer Unboxed, the fine writer’s site that has daily posts on all aspects of writing craft, the publishing...
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Warm Applause for Writers Who Give Generously
I spend entirely too much time reading about writing and reading about writers rather than writing myself, but when I am reading, I want to be provoked, challenged, stimulated and amused. Over the...
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