Category: Content nerdery

  • Catching Up

    The longer one puts off a task, the bigger it becomes. Especially with writing. How can I tell you what’s transpired in the last five months? Of course, I’ve thought about writing. Late at night, when I don’t feel right, I craft paragraphs in my head. The language in my head-writing, and here on this…

  • The Dinosaur Bone (what you think you’re no good at)

    I clearly remember the moment I decided I couldn’t draw. I was eight. Staring at a massive dinosaur skeleton in the Natural History Museum in Denver. Was it a Stegosaurus? A Tyrannosaurus?  I’m not sure. The view in my memory is of the right side of it. A shape which contained the bone I was to draw.…

  • My First Novel (gag)

    My Little Pony My First Novel I feel shy about it. “My novel,” I’d say as an awkward pubescent might say “my private parts.” I labored over my love-story-gone-wrong for years. I grew it paragraphy by paragraph. I wrote and re-wrote. I cried and got stuck and fought my way onward. I kept writing, and…

  • Oh, Yeah. The Power of a Vision.

    I have to ask myself: well, how did we get here? (Talking Heads: the days go by / water flowing under ground…) I think it had something to do with the broad brush strokes on that piece of paper on the fridge. We weren’t studying it, but it was at eye level, and it reminded…

  • Antidote to the Y.S.Y.D.S. game

    If my book is never published and never read, I can keep torturing myself by playing out ridiculous fantasies where: a) It’s praised as “the voice of our generation,” “a cunning retelling of a classic love story gone awry,” and “San Francisco’s best tale since Tales of the City.” OR (still in my head, that…

  • Writing a novel: why, how, and what now

    I’ve always wanted to be a novelist. Just before my thirtieth birthday, I had a frightening realization: I could be one of those people who never did what they wanted to do! If I didn’t start, the story that was in my head wouldn’t get written. I’d just keep working for my whole life and…