James M. Jackson's Blog, page 24

How to Choose Continuing Characters

Every novelist who writes a sequel or series has to choose which characters from the first (or second or third) should have a continuing role and which should fade into history. The main character is an obvious choice for a continuing role. Can you imagine Sue Grafton’s “Alphabet Series” without Kinsey Milhone? Neither can I. However, Clive Cussler managed over time to supplant his aging protagonist, Dirk Pitt, with his son, Dirk Pitt, Jr. But I digress; let’s assume your protagonist will con...

Persistence

“No great achievement is accomplished without persistent work.”

~ Bertrand Russell














Jan and I are in the midst of a trip around Lake Superior. Trips are wonderful for learning new things and for providing ample opportunities to people-watch. Last week we spent a night in Wawa, Ontario. My bird-watching friends may already know that wawa is the Anishinaabe word for Canada Goose. While the goose statue outside of town was worth a couple of photos, Jan and I will continue to think of...

Who Deserves a Quality Life?

The fifteen dollar minimum wage: over the last month pundits
on every side of the economic icosahedron have put forth their arguments,
couched in terms of effects on job creation, inflationary pressures, global
competition and the like. It’s either great, terrible, probably okay or not.






I’m a number geek so the numbers side of things is
interesting to me, BUT all the economic back-and-forths
miss the real question: Who deserves a quality life? Keep that in mind
as we look at the general p...

A Discussion About Obamacare

During a recent bridge tournament I enjoyed dinner with
several of my teammates and friends. I have no idea exactly how it happened,
but the talk turned to Obamacare. The initial statement tossed out to the table
was something to the effect that “Obamacare will bankrupt the country.” Since
at least two of the seven sharing dinner did not agree at all with that
statement (including yours truly) the result could have been (1) a heated
argument between opposing sides, (2) those who did not agr...

Services for Writers - Caveat Emptor

I recently came across two entities that want to sell their services to writers with payment models I found interesting.






the new online bookstore










The first is Bookstore Without Borders (http://www.bookstorewithoutborders.com/). They correctly note that to make a sale one needs product, platform and exposure. An author’s e-book is the product; they propose to provide the platform (an online bookstore) and exposure.






The question I always like to address when it comes to servic...

Coming and Going

One of the “problems” I did not foresee when I took up writing is living in multiple stories at the same time. All fiction writers, perforce, must live in the world they are creating on the page and the actual world. (Although some use alcohol and drugs to try to avoid the actual world.) I understood and had no problems with that phenomenon. The issue I’m currently dealing with is more complex, and I can only imagine what happens to writers with multiple series.




Bad Policy had its...

Taking Lessons From Nature

Last week I finally bit the bullet and labeled the pictures I had taken so far in 2013. Well, not all of the pictures, only the ones I had not previously deleted. Without this filing process, it is difficult to find any particular picture when I want it. The use of metadata tags makes searching go much more quickly.






This process also had the benefit that I got to view my pictures with a fresh eye and on a day when my philosophical hat was firmly in place. Here are a few that caught my at...

TWO Secrets to Writing Success

I could try to drag the suspense out, but I won’t.



 1. READ



 2. WRITE



 Order counts.



READ



 I’ve kept a list of every book I’ve read since I started high school. The list numbers 2,149 and does not count rereads of favorite books. Nor does it reflect other reading including short stories, essays, magazines, text books, professional journals and whatnot. That averages roughly 44 books a year. The standard deviation is high. The years range from a low of 6 (1986, a year...

Intermediaries

After church last week, a member caught me and asked for
help on a financial matter. He had intended to purchase a CD and name the
church as its beneficiary. A financial advisor at his bank suggested a “better
investment” with “higher returns.” The member wasn’t sure what the investment
was and wanted some advice.





I called the financial advisor to get a full
prospectus in order to understand the underlying investment and its risks to go
along with the purported higher returns. That was two...

Saying No to Abusive Behavior

“There is no excuse for it. I was wrong.” So said former Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice in his apology speech before cameras.








Most people who have watched the video of Rice abusing his players agree that he was wrong. He was wrong to push players around. He was wrong to throw basketballs at them. He was wrong to use homophobic slurs.








Not everyone agrees. At least one commentator on Fox took the stance that coaches use such physical and emotional viole...