Darius Jones's Blog: A Writer Begins, page 18

The Craft: How to Know You’re Ready to Write Your Story

[This is part of a continuing series on the art of writing fiction.]

Has it been 2 weeks since my last post? Man, time flies.

So…A couple of posts ago, I talked about rejection. This time, let’s talk emotion. Let’s talk where I’m at in my writing right now. No retrospectives, no looks at other writers or other writers’ work. I just want to answer: Where am I at? And where’s my writing at?

I think I’ve made progress in one small area: story selection. I’ve written about this before too. You k...

Time to (Re)Read A Moveable Feast?

Can’t let this pass without mentioning it.

I’ve had a lot of fun over the years making fun of Hemingway, I admit it. But A Moveable Feast is a great little novel. And obviously, the Paris attacks have been on everyone’s mind this past week. Today, I was very moved to see Hemingway’s memoirs of his younger days in 1920s Paris skyrocket to the top of the bestseller charts in France.

It’s interesting to see a book by an American author heralded as an exemplar of French culture. But you know wh...

50 Rejections…and Counting

So, a strange thing happened on the way to racking up 50 rejection letters. That’s right. For those of you wondering, I have submitted my various stories and novellas to magazines 50 times and 50 times, those stories have ended up being rejected (according to my Duotrope submission tracker). But here’s the funny thing that happened. I only noticed it after I got the 51st rejection. That 50th rejection passed without notice. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t check my email every 12 hours...

Writing, Submitting, Thinking

Guys, back at the blog again and I have little to say here for the time being. I wanted to do a longer piece today, but I’m just not feeling it. So instead of forcing the issue, here’s a little update on my writing.

Writing
I wrote a blown-out outline of a novella last weekend. It was part of my attempt to write more detailed outlines before I dive into a piece. I was happy with some of the scenes and the emotions they conjured…but…I feel that there is a significant logic problem with the pl...

The Craft: How to Hunt and Destroy Gerunds

Today’s post is for the writers out there. I’m going to put forward one quick, easy method to sharpen your later drafts. It’s a method that’s simple, but also has a little technological trick to it.

First thing, I’m going to assume you hate gerunds. You know, those words in English that end in –ing. Like walking, talking, etc. One thing I’ve noticed and come to loathe is the use of gerunds in my writing…Dammit…Wait…That one didn’t count…

Anyway, if you don’t hate gerunds, you should. They te...

Forging Ahead—with New Stuff

“Silence is a source of great strength,”—so says Lao Tzu (or something like that). And yet here I am blogging… Anyway…

Wow. 2 weeks have passed by in a flash. It’s frustrating when my day job gets out of control like it is right now. It means that the fiction writing suffers. And the blog? Well, it becomes just an afterthought. This was the first time in a long time when I really drew a blank on what to write here on the blog. Thus, the Lao Tzu quote. So, in a nod to the time I have had to sa...

A Writer’s Equipment

Thought I would do something a little different today. I spend a lot of time talking about what I write, the craft of writing and all that stuff. But I want to take a play out of the musicians’ playbook and tell you what I write on. Guitarists in particular, will often list what guitars and amps they use. For example, there’s Slash’s preference for Les Paul guitars and Marshall amps.

But what do writers use these days? Surely, they don’t use quills and parchment, always sure to keep their pe...

When the Dust Settles

Hey, everybody.

It’s a been a really busy month. Work—you know, that day job—has really gone off the hook this month. In a bad way. I was trying to take work stuff down a notch, but that ain’t happening. In fact, it’s getting more intense. And it’s doesn’t look like that will clear up until the middle of September. Sigh…

Anyway, what am I getting at? The first thing I cut back on in my free time is the writing of this blog, so I had to do that this this time. The fiction writing is even suff...

Short Story Title Reveal: Pacha-Mama

…and I’m back.

Back to work, back to writing, back to civilization, which after all, is simply writing + fermentation, like Faulkner said(?). It’s true that it’s hard to think of a civilization that didn’t have BOTH. Just think about it. The Mayans, the Babylonians, ancient Chinese, ancient Persians, Egyptians. They all had the two…but I digress…

What have I been up to? Writing-wise that is? I’ve finished off a new short story…It actually runs a bit long to about 8,000 words. It’s called Pac...

Vacation Time

Taking a little break. It’s the summer and I’m on vacation, so not much time to update the blog. Or write. I’ll do a bigger post when I return on August 14.

Until then, I’ll be wrapping up a draft of my latest short story “P” and resubmitting some stories that I’ve already finished. Just so you know it’s not all vacation.

Will see you all again soon with some more updates on where my writing is going.

,DJ

Elmore Leonard’s Rules for Writing
To tide you over until I return, here’s somethi...