Faith, Fully: A Collaborative, Letter-Writing Project Religiously-minded friends. I’m looking for people who are willing to write public letters about their faith and how they view the world. Interested? … Read More
But Always There Has Been Pearl Jam I’d go home, open a bottle of Jameson, turn off the lights in my room, pull out the napkins, crank up Merkinball, and write until the story was done. … Read More
My Drunken Email to Michael Lewis: A Graduate School Story Tonight, an object lesson for students in the age of social media. (Actually, I’m surprised this story has remained ‘off blog’ for so long since my friends are ever-so-happy to hear it told.) In 1999, I worked as a teaching assistant for Michael Lewis while a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate… Read More
On Writing about the NSA and Terrorism on September 11, 2001 As the nation tried to collect itself in the hours, minutes, and days after the terrorist attacks, our president rightfully spent a great deal of time and energy reassuring the public. What I didn’t believe, though, was the insistence that we could adequately monitor digital communications in order to find out if there were looming threats.… Read More
Things That Happen in a Writer’s Mind After months and years of research, I’ve finally started outlining So Far Appalachia, my next book project. The early part of the writing process involves organizing my anecdotes, inserting them within chapters, and arranging the chapters in a way that will elicit the reader to consider certain themes. It looks like this:… Read More
Review: Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It by David M. Ewalt My rating: 3 of 5 stars It’s wildly difficult to write a first-person account of a phenomenon. The reason: Authors-as-characters only work when they become surrogates for the reader. Too often writers inject themselves into… Read More
January: The Year of Focus Update We know that the best way for humans to change their behavior patterns is through tracking mechanisms. If you want to lose weight, you have to count (somewhere) what you are eating. If you want to get stronger in the gym, you have to count what you are doing. Without that tracking mechanism, we lose… Read More
The Year of Focus I think thematically. As each year comes to a close, I spend December sitting with the work of my previous year. I sift through what I’ve created, I look at what I didn’t create, and conceptualize what I want my next year to become. I’ve always been methodical and particular in my thinking, but I’ve become much… Read More
What Writing Looks Like: Home Den Addition People have this romantic notion of what it must be like to be a writer. More often than not, it looks like this. Of note: the giant coffee mug, the beard, the sleeveless undershirt the clipboard, and the look of utter disdain at having a creative palette that consists of the worst tools known to man, “words.”… Read More
How It Ends…How It Always Should End… The scariest thing for a recovering addict to do is return to his life of crime. Seven years ago, I stepped away from writing. Five years ago, I stepped away from just about everything else. Thanks to some amazing friends and support from people who believe in So Far Appalachia, I guess it’s time to… Read More