Monday, January 17, 2011


  
"On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it political?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." 

Martin Luther King Jr.

Thursday, January 13, 2011








Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.   
~  Stephen King








Sunday, January 9, 2011




 ❝ Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write.❞  

༺༻ William Faulkner

Thursday, January 6, 2011


Science fiction author Ray Bradbury regales his audience with stories about his life and love of writing in "Telling the Truth," the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University. Series: Writer's Symposium By The Sea ...

Monday, January 3, 2011


This was the subject of Mitch Albom's best-selling book 'Tuesdays With Morrie', Professor Morrie Schwartz, former sociology teacher at Brandeis University. Here in an interview with Ted Koppel Morrie shares his lessons on life, in his final class.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

E.B. White || In His Own Words




"...Delay is natural to a writer. I walk around, straightening pictures on the wall, rugs on the floor - as though not until everything in the world is lined up and perfectly true could anybody reasonable expect me to set a word down on paper ..." 

- E. B. White


Saturday, January 1, 2011

The Lost Blog Post

This was a post I was supposed to put up at the Writer's Den in late November, explaining my futile and strange writing process while attempting National Novel Writing Month.  At the time it sounded rather whiny and excuse-laden (typical David!) but upon re-reading it I find that it's quite interesting: it illustrates the inner workings of a writer In Media Res; in the midst of the chaos we call 'Writing'.   So enjoy my first blog post of 2011, a little thing called ... Bare Bones Writing.



"...But still I keep writing, leaving a trail of badly composed (or decomposed) phrases and half realized scenes ..."



 Three weeks ago I was cajoled into taking part in National Novel Writing Month, not because I was shamed into it, but because I saw how much fun everyone was having in the grand attempt to get a book written in 30 days.

Did I say fun? Ha!

Sure, the word count starts off at a manageable clip: 1666 words a day. But when you miss a day, that total climbs by 58 words, then 118, and so on. There’s really no time to mess around. When you start missing two or three days, well, it gets ugly, but the prospect of a marathon session of 10,000 words always seems to soothe the blasted soul and scuppers the guilt for a while.

Until you miss another day, and another. And, who wants to slug out 10,000 words under such pressure?

This is what happens when you start to ponder the incoherent mess being dictated on the pages of your novel ...CONT. ->