Thoughts
I write a lot. Essays. Articles. Blog posts. All of them sharing what I’m thinking about. Maybe you think about these things, too.
Know Them Before You Break Them
But essential to any of these options is an understanding of both the rule’s original intent and its current application; in comparing these two aspects, we can proceed with genuine wisdom.
Why AI Can’t Do Poetry
A bot executes algorithms, and does so perfectly every time. There is no space there for the experience of failure, or the yearning for something transcendent.
The Loneliness Crisis: Words to the Rescue
I feel I’m leaving friends, or acquaintances, or a whole community behind when I close the book. How on earth could I ever be lonely?
Enough is Enough
For us in the West, “enough” often means “not quite what I want, but it will do.” But what if enough were actually—enough?
The Story of My Stories
And I realized something I may have known before, but certainly never articulated: that for me, the plot is the last thing I worry about. (Strange admission for a mystery writer to make!).
Real or Robot? Who Can Tell?
Ludwig Wittgenstein says that we form language as part of human activity, and that we then shape that activity through language. But both parts are necessary; and, so far, AI can’t manage the “human activity” part of the equation.
Why We Write in Dark Times
Art is never neutral—it holds power, shapes culture, and carries history. Keep making it. Keep making light.
In Times of Darkness, Artists Make Light
This country and this world need the light now more than ever. Together, we can find it, and nurture it, and embody it.
How Many Times Can (Should) You Tweak Your Work?
Do you edit as you go, or are you more disciplined than I am and step away from it?
Do You Care? Here’s How
But, importantly, they do not make any of those feelings or situations about you: they create a reality in which you are part of the characters’ lives, emotions, and cares.
Why do the Arts Matter?
In ancient Greece, art and music were deemed the only channels to communicate with the gods. I think they were on to something.
Moving Beyond Disaster-Think
Our new role: conservationists of the paintings and symphonies and books and performances that express humanity’s greatest ideas and emotions, protecting the ones that exist and creating more, no matter what the difficulty, no matter if it breaks our hearts.
The Morality of Crime Fiction
Moral crime fiction, on the other hand, is steeped in reality. It holds up a mirror to the reader and posits that under the right circumstances, we could all be a victim—or a killer.
Good-bye to a storyteller
Best known for a crime fiction series with supernatural elements set in the Welsh borders, he wrote what I think of as multidimensional stories—stories you can read and enjoy on a superficial level, but which can also draw you in deeper to consider your own beliefs and values.
What happens when you get a bad review?
Every book, at one time or another, gets a bad review.
Write Like an Actor
How would an actor approach your protagonist? How would they take your description and the situation into which you’ve plunged the character, and make that character unforgettable?
Why Stories?
Yes, it’s true: I live in my head. Wherever my current story ideas take me. To Cuba or Nepal or California. With people who sing, or tend cows, or—sometimes—commit murder. And those places and those people are real. They may not even make it out of my head, but for the time they’re there? They are still very real.
What’s in a Name?
My characters come to life as I write, not before. They shift and morph and often change the entire narrative arc of my stories. They become who they are in chapter five, or eight, or ten. So the name I started with generally just doesn’t fit the character as they emerge, as they talk with other characters, as they make choices, as they tell me where the book needs to go.
Stuck? Try a Character Tarot Read!
Doing a Tarot read for one or more of your characters is a terrific way of seeing them in another light, giving you ideas for their personalities and histories, and providing a little more depth to the way you write them for your readers.