There Are No New Story Lines

There are no new storylines, just fresh characters.

There are limited number of story-lines. I don't know the exact number, sources vary. Some say 5, some say 7, some say 9, some say something else. The number of them is smaller rather than larger.

There are fresh characters. If you ever watched Murder She Wrote, a long-running prime-time tv series starring Angela Landsbury, who played a mystery writer who solved crimes.

The story-lines were always rather humdrum. Her always fresh character kept you watching, not the story lines. It's like that with writing fiction.

I want to help move people's careers along. Is what I am saying helpful?

To find out about my new literary connectorship, contact me at 215 219 5825 or twb2@verizon.net.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for my ideas on the practice of real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

On Punctuation

In the vortex of revising my book one last time, I'm examining every word in every sentence, every quotation mark, comma, etc., worrying that I'm reading over obvious mistakes. I'm thinking a lot about punctuation.

Punctuation aids communication; the way one punctuates, or doesn't, affects the way people understand what you are saying, or don't.

There are strict rules about punctuation. Most writers obey them. Except Cormac McCarthy. I'm rereading No Country for Old Men (New York: Vintage Books, 2006).

On p. 57, he writes: Anything can be an instrument, Chigurh said.

Now, most writers, including me, would have written: "Anything can be an instrument," Chigurh said. But he is not most writers. Consistent with his general bias against punctuating anything, I'm surprised he didn't write: Anything can be an instrument Chigurh said.

On p. 55, he writes: I dont know. Folks dont generally bet on a coin toss. It's usually more like just settle somethin.

This is wonderful dialogue if you're into the flow of the scene, but why not follow the rules one place and another not? Punctuation is to communicate. Sometimes its hard to figure what it is that hes doin when its hard to understand whats going on.

Lesson: Unless you're Cormac McCarthy, which there's only one of, use correct punctuation and your readers will thank you for it by reading more of your books.

I want to help move people's careers along. Is what I am saying helpful?

To find out about my new literary connectorship, contact me at 215 219 5825 or twb2@verizon.net.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for my ideas on the practice of real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.I

I have to write

Me, I have to write. If I never published a word, I'd have write. If I were confined to a prison cell, I'd write. I cannot not write. It's hard-wired into me.

My mother tried to have a writing career. I came across some short stories she wrote, but couldn't get published. She was a life-long journal-er. I have those too.

I feel blessed that she wrote so much. I feel like I know her better and she is still with me.

I also found an issue of Playboy under my father's bed, but that's for another blog posting.

I want to help move people's careers along. Is what I am saying helpful?

To find out about my new literary connectorship, contact me at 215 219 5825 or twb2@verizon.net.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for my ideas on the practice of real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Write with the Fewest Words Possible But...

Attributed to Einstein is this: A theory should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Occam's razor says, of all competing hypotheses concocted to explain something, the simplest is likely to be correct.

Then there's the KISS marking rule: Keep it Simple Stupid.

I used to think: Write with the fewest words possible. Rereading Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, I came across a sentence that was hugely long. Yet I was at a loss as to see where I could have cut it and not ruined it.

I've revised my standard mantra: Write with the fewest words possible, but no fewer. McCarthy's sentence had no further than the fewest words possible.

I want to help move people's careers along. Is what I am saying helpful?

To find out about my new literary connectorship, contact me at 215 219 5825 or twb2@verizon.net.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for my ideas on the practice of real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Writers are Keepers of Secrets

Steven King once said, "Everything goes in, eventually." I take what his meaning to be that our fiction is the outcome of a process that draws on everything we are, were, and will be. Nothing gets left out.

We all know unflattering things about others. Sometimes we have been entrusted with them. Sometimes we found them out otherwise. We have to be careful what we write to avoid violating our friends.

We all are keepers of each other's secrets. As writers we have a greater potential do do harm by revealing something about another person they don't want revealed. So, we have to be careful what we write. We may be violating a loved one's privacy.

I want to help move people's careers along. Is what I am saying helpful?

To find out about my new literary endeavor, contact me at 215 219 5825 or twb2@verizon.net.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for my ideas on the practice of real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Narrative Style

The television programs I like to watch, other than politics and sports, have a simple and straight-forward narrative style: Hemingway, not Faulkner. Forensic Files, Cold Case Files, American Justice. They move along at the right pace, not so fast that you can't follow them, but so slowly that you want to wring the producers' necks.

The Law and Orders of the world are overly dramatized. 1st 48, which I like sometimes, tends to move too slowly. 48-hrs mysteries, too, are so padded an hour program could have been polished off in 15 minutes.

Criminal Minds tends to be overly dramatized, too, and often far too grisly than they need to be, but the way they tell the story is sometimes absolutely fascinating.

I want to help move people's careers along. Is what I am saying helpful?

To find out about my new literary brokerage, contact me at 215 219 5825 or twb2@verizon.net.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for my ideas on the practice of real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

When are you happiest?

I'm happiest when I'm writing.

Sure I love to be with my wife,
and I love to go to concerts,
and I love to play chamber music,
and I love to read,
and I love to play chess,
and I love to have coffee and talk with people about things that are important to us,
and I love to have a good meal.

I love all these things.

But I'm happiest when I'm writing.

I want to help move people's careers along. Is what I am saying helpful?

To find out about my new literary brokerage, contact me at 215 219 5825 or twb2@verizon.net.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for my ideas on the practice of real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Creative forgetting

I've finished the next-to-last draft and put the book into creative isolation where I won't work on it for at least 2 weeks. We need to go through a process of creative forgetting. That way the mind will be fresh and can look at the work with a new objectivity.

Do you practice this as well
I want to give people tips to help their writing. Are these helpful?

To find out about my new literary brokerage, contact me at 215 219 5825 or twb2@verizon.net.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for my ideas on the practice of real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Finishing up a book I've been working on for what seems like forever, I finally found how I can really, really let it go.

The reason--I finally understood the motivation of one of the two main characters.

This insight came after I revised it in a different order. I mapped out the action day by day so I would have a written record of who was who and what happened when. I figured I would need this for the synopsis anyway. Then revised each chapter as if it were a quasi-short story. And about mid-way through the process, the epiphany came to me.

Now, I can let it go. Are you having trouble letting go of your book? Try doing something different with it.

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

I see my writing as helping to incubate a small business. I won't be paid directly for it, but it will monetize in some shape or form. My challenge is to understand how that monetization can occur. In developing this business, I try to act as a skilled entrepreneur. I'm learning every day. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.