Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Anniversary of Murder
The anniversary of the murder-suicide of my best friends is coming up shortly. What an annual event, huh? I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’ve just enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine with dinner and now the enjoyment is being supplanted by grief, as the alcohol magnifies my emotions. D was...
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Tuesday, January 24, 2006
The Power of Passion
Previously, I talked about how Ray Bradbury’s advice to write about your passions inspired me to write two novels. Well, another of my passions is writing, which is why I probably will tackle that subject from time to time in this Opinion blog. Yet another is teaching. I taught for only eight years,...
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Monday, January 23, 2006
The Best Advice About Writing
The best advice that I ever received about writing came from Ray Bradbury, in his book Zen in the Art of Writing. In a nutshell, his message: Write about what you are passionate. In hindsight, such wisdom seems obvious. Also, as someone writing for a living, I already was dealing with subjects of...
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Saturday, January 21, 2006
Punctuation? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Punctuation
Let's abolish the rules and make writing easier for everybody. Actually, with the advent of e-mail, we’re well on our way to doing that anyway, but I say that we make the demolition official and that we start with punctuation. First, we throw out the apostrophes and commas. Who needs them? And who...
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Friday, January 20, 2006
Writing As If My Life Depends On It--- Because It Does
My mind is a nonstop collection agency, constantly accumulating conversations, observations, and information. I don’t know why it is that way, but I know it is. I also know my brain would explode if I didn’t write. If I don’t make a journal entry, write to friends, or work on an article or fiction...
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Thursday, January 19, 2006
They Lie to You
I really don’t like commercial television very much, mostly because it’s--- what else?--- commercial. Recently I tried watching “24,” that popular series with Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, a counter-terrorism expert. Part of its wide appeal is supposed to be because the action is in “real time.”...
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Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Who's Mentoring Whom?
In late 2004, I volunteered to be a mentor for a program called Friends of the Family because I wanted to give something back to the community. Spending a few hours every couple of weeks with a child who has no father seemed a good way to contribute. A year later, it still does. But “good” no longer...
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Tuesday, January 17, 2006
I'll Blog No More, Forever
Forgive my impertinence. I’m new here and new to blogging. So new and so innocent, in fact, that I originally decided to share a novel of mine in the “Fiction” category for one of my blogs. I’ve since taken it off and replaced it with this “Opinion” blog. Novels are not meant to be read backward, or...
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