Skid Style Part 4

Skid blinked in the light as a voice said, “Jesus Christ! What the hell are you doing, kid! Trying ta give me a heart attack?!” The voice was familiar somehow. He decided to ignore it and confront them like the hero he was supposed to be. He ran quickly to the driver-side door, and gave it a hard yank. The interior light came on to illuminate the gate guard, sitting in the driver seat. Her face was pale in the glare of the harsh mercury lighting from the parking lot lamps. Skid felt his cheeks flush in embarassment.

“Uh, sorry. … [READ MORE]

Skid Style part 3

Stumbling over a generator cable, he caught his balance, then was in the clear once again, until a few docks later when the process repeated. Four minutes and a good deal of dodging later, Charlie came to the north end of the dockyard. This was where the burglaries had happened. Skid slowed to a stop. The docks here were thinner than the south end, and older. The wooden planking was grey from weathering. The planks had cement poured next to them, building the dock area outwards to hold the larger loading equipment. The warehouses abutted the edge of the docks. … [READ MORE]

Skid Style Part 2

He turned off Belcher, then slowed and turned on Collier. The street ran north and fronted the warehouses that stored goods from the ships being serviced at the docks. The pace on the docks and warehouses was frantic. It looked to Charlie like a ant nest that had been kicked open. Cranes were moving cargo off the freighters in large pallets. Another freighter was sliding containers down a ramp to waiting eighteen wheel tractor-trailer flatbeds. The line of trucks stretched over a quarter mile by his estimate.

He looked back forward just in time to avoid drifting into the curb … [READ MORE]

Skid Style part 1

Charlie ‘Skid’ Moore ran leisurely in traffic, easily keeping up with the forty mile an hour pace. His bright suit of red shirt and blue pants stood out in the traffic. He’d originally gone for a dark grey and black, thinking it looked cooler, but after four very near misses with hurtling vehicles, he’d opted for a brighter, more visible color combination. While it kept him from more near misses, it also created it’s own problems. People, especially those in the news business, and fanatics on both sides of the ‘superhero’ argument were prone to following him around. It made … [READ MORE]

Much ado about not writing

How to not write? Simple, just stop. Once you get in the habit of stopping there’s nothing to stop you stopping except to get back up and write. You have to choose, writing or not. You can cry to the world that you love writing, but it’s all empty air until you sit down and break your habit of sitting. Writing can be fun, and is it ever rewarding. However, there are many days when writing isn’t convenient, or a struggle to develop a scene or step through the awkwardness of writing about something deeply personal or uncomfortable. That’s when … [READ MORE]

On success

How do I measure success? With the metric system.

Seriously, success is difficult to describe, which in part is why we’re writing about it here. My own personal measure of success is not by sales or publishing, though, those are great perks of the job. My measure of success is finishing. Yes, I want people to read my stories, enjoy them and even re-read them. But, to me, that’s validation, not actual success.

Success is starting a project, and seeing it through to the end. Did I have the perseverance to finish a story and the belief that it should … [READ MORE]

On characters

In my admittedly thin writing experience, I’ve found that creating characters is akin to hitting a constantly changing moving target. I never really take notes about the story. I just tend to dive in and let things evolve.

I like thinking about the main characters. My first view of them is almost always not what they end up as. I’d originally thought that Fern, in ‘Best Intentions’ would be a larger than life character. I first thought of her as the Amazon of the two sisters, but as I started writing, I realized that I’d reversed the view. Fern was … [READ MORE]

The creative process, an example.

The creative process is different for everyone. How I think of things is not how you will at all. The following example is some of the things I see in word association.

To show what I mean I’ll use a random word generator to get three random words to start with, and try to build ideas from those words.

I got match, celery, look. Pretty darn random.

To take the words in order:

Match could mean an identical thing, a romantic joining, or a matchstick.

Celery is a lot more narrow. It’s not really slang for anything, and is a … [READ MORE]

My wall

If you’re curious, that’s my wall in the picture. To explain what you’re looking at is a story.

This one’s called ‘No Fury’ the pale yellow card is a background character who has a professional grudge with one of the main characters described on the neon orange card it’s directly above.

The purple cards are significant background characters whose actions impact the main protagonists and the world.

That white quote over the headphones is from Groucho Marx, and reminds me it’s my choice that determines how I face the day.

The big 8-1/2 x 11 piece of paper are tasks … [READ MORE]

Another thought on writing

I don’t know how someone else gets ideas for stories. I’ll guess that something triggers an idea that ‘something’ is a good story. In my case, there is a trigger. It’s not always the same. As an example, I may read an article about Fuel cells, and that becomes a cascade of linked ideas, such as a fuel cell made of paper ( don’t laugh it’s actually been done) which grows to what about making a paper airplane with whose kind o fuel cells, which goes to why not a regular plane, or a dirigible which uses humidity in the … [READ MORE]