Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 26

Every Writer Has An Achilles Heel

 

Action, comedy, dialogue, sex, or violence - which ofthese do you find the most difficult to write and why?

 

I think of writers as a crossbetween the court jester and Achilles. The court’s entertainer regales thecourt, and he has full immunity. No topic is denied. The Greek hero is a fearlesswarrior, invulnerable, except for his heel because his mother had not coveredit when she dipped her infant son into the waters of the river Styx.

 

Writers, like the joker,jugg...

The Fun Parts of Writing

 Q: Action, comedy, dialogue, sex, or violence - which of these do you find the most difficult to write and why?

from Susan

 

I like writing dialogue the most, and humor finds its way into my work without my pushing it. Happily, reviewers agree that’s kind of a given with my books – not joke humor but mostly a sly side-eye at human behavior. Dialogue seems easy to me because I write like I think (see side-eye) and I hear dialogue as conversation first. The only thing I have to do in edits is get ri...

Advice, shmadvice - for my younger self, by Harini Nagendra

Here's an interesting prompt - state how long you’ve been writing, and what advice would you give to your younger self before you turned professional?If you ask most writers, I think they will tell you that they always wrote - or at least, always told stories, as long as they could remember. Even if, sometimes, the story was narrated to an audience of just one - themselves. My earliest memory of story-telling is probably a very Indian story, that too of an Indian who grew up in the 1970s, in an ...

Half of What You Think You Don’t Know from James W. Ziskin

How long you’ve been writing, and what advice would you give to your younger self before you turned professional?
I have been writing seriously for about twenty years now. But before that, I wrote off and on for decades. That’s right, decades. As I’ve posted in this space before, I banged out my first novel on a portable blue Royal typewriter at the age of twelve. One hundred and ten perfectly fine sheets of paper ruined.
But I knew I wanted to be a writer even then, so I kept plugging away. Each ...

Guest Post by John Lansing

This week I asked my good friend and terrific author John Lansing to drop by and do a guest post. John's the author of the highly rated Jack Bertolino series. His new novel Mia has just been released, it's highly recommended, and you can check out his website for more details. 

State how long you've been writing, and what advice would you give to your younger self before you turned professional?

I was a late-comer to writing. I had already spent about 20 years as a working actor. Life happens, an...

Retro Advice

 

Terry here, answering our question of the week: State how long you’ve been writing, and what advice would you give to your younger self before you turned professional? 
Believe it or not, at one time I was trying to decide whether to become a professional singer or a writer. I’d always considered myself a writer, but I also loved to sing. What made the decision for me was that I realized that singing required a lot more ambition than I had. I honestly don’t know how singers manage to become well...

You've Been Writing How Long?

State how long you’ve been writing, and what advice would you give to your younger self before you turned professional?

Brenda
Odd timing - I did a bookstore signing last weekend and at least three people asked how long I'd been writing. I answered that my first published book came out in 2004, so I've been published for 20 years and released my 25th book this past spring. But I'd been writing for years before 'turning professional' in 2004, if the release of that first book marks the official dat...

Some Old White Guy, by Josh Stallings

Q: Your thoughts on authors asked to write Content/Trigger Warnings for their novels?

A: Old school Josh used to think these were silly. “Come on man, they’re just words.” The title of my first book was Beautiful Naked & Dead, if that title doesn’t upset you the content shouldn’t. That’s what I thought then. I also thought if I’m not afraid walking anywhere in the world you shouldn’t be either. 

I’ve grown up some since then. Here are a couple of events that helped me.

In the early part of the Tump...

How to talk yourself into something you never wanted to do, by Catriona

I'm going off topic today, but briefly, on trigger warnings . . .

My take is that upset, offence and discomfort are part of every life, but PTSD is rare and serious. When someone is triggered into an episode of PTSD, they re-experience trauma as severely as when they went through it for real. Worse perhaps, since you can't escape what you've produced inside your own head. There's no running away. So people with PTSD are adept at avoiding their triggers and, although that much vigilance can be exh...

Get your finger off the trigger by Eric Beetner

 Your thoughts on authors asked to write Content/Trigger Warnings for their novels?

In short, I'm against it.

Most people take the approach that art should make us confront things, oftentimes ugly things. I think pure entertainment is the same way. I don't think art/entertainment needs to be confrontational, however. There is a difference. But the idea of "comfort zones" is absurd to me.

We all like what we like and there should be no obligation to read subjects we don't like or that make us uneasy...