In a previous blog, I announced to everyone that my novel Seiji was finished. It was. Problem was it had not yet been given to an editor (though it had been shared with friends, whose responses were quite a bit less than, erm, "enthused" about it. After giving it to my editor here in Sapporo, Derek Chamberlain, I discovered that I had (and have) a lot of work to do to make Seiji the great story I want it to be. Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets and novelists. Here is what she has t...

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What makes a story a short story?

The most effective -- and creepiest -- short story I have ever read was a page and a half long in a paperback “pocket” book that I read back in 1954 or 55. I don’t recall the author’s name, but I do recall the story in every chilling detail. Set in the parking lot of a hospital at the end of her 3 - 11 shift, a nurse was getting into her car when a criminally insane patient she knew came up to her, killed her and ... well, you can imagine how the r...

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It's been a year and a half since I typed the first word. This morning at around 8AM I finished my first edit. In a week I'll do another go through and make changes, then it's off to the publisher after the first of the year. What a feeling, and what an adventure it has been! 

And then what? Could be the book about Mexico City ("The City Has Many Faces"), but is likely to be something else that I'll have more to say about later. Other than writing book reviews, mapping out the next book and re...
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“What are you doing, son?” the American soldier with the Japanese face asks.

“Drawing.” Seiji holds up a scrap of cardboard on which he has drawn a picture of his old neighborhood before Tokyo was firebombed and his neighborhood erased.

“Nice work!” the soldier says in Japanese. He squats down to have a closer look. “Is that all you have to draw on?”

“Mmmm, I found it over there.” He aims a charcoal-begrimed finger at a nearby trash heap next to the concrete remains of wha...

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My apologies for being tardy with posting on my blog. The main problem has been my laptop which is on its last legs and too unreliable to use. So I bought an iMac and found myself, as an old Windows user, beginning a new learning experience. It's been a challenge, and a happy one. I now have things figured out sufficiently to get back to my novel, book reviewing an blogging.

Now for the subject of reviewing books, something I've done in tandem with writing poetry and fiction since the early 19...
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I love to write; I don't always enjoy editing. Writing is creative and fun; editing too often seems like work. It's a matter of you we look at it.

I remember seeing my mother standing in front of her easel with a paintbrush poised, thinking. She'd add a bit of color here, remove something there, change something else. Finally satisfied, she would pronounce the painting finished. To her, "editing" was a part of the creative process. Most of the time I view it the same way. But it isn't always "...
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Call it writer's block or hitting a roadblock, getting there happens to all writers. It happened to me three or four days ago after sailing along smoothly in my novel about Tokyo artist Seiji. Reaching a scene change, I was stuck, up-to-the-hubcaps in mud, dead battery dead. Stared at the blank space and couldn't think of a thing. Nada.

Then this morning I made a startlingly simple discovery: I was trying to remember something I had deleted ... a bit of scenery from the new chapter, but it wou...
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Parking

New writing projects pop into my head fairly often, especially when my brain is in “create” mode. I may be riding along on the subway, eating, talking with my wife or a friend, just waking up (happened this morning), overhear someone talking, or have an idea or image nag away at me until I do something about it. If any of the ideas begi...

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Last year I wrote a short story about a fictional Tokyo artist named Seiji Matsuda. The story finished and published ("A Rainbow Feast: New Asian Short Stories", edited by Mohammad A. Quayum), I turned to other writing projects. Seiji, however, wasn't through with me. So I set the other projects aside and began working on expanding his story into a novel about his life. It is now about half finished, and what a challenge it has been.

A short story is one thing; a novel is something else again....
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Writing, for me, is a love affair. Rewriting is what makes the love affair with a writing project blossom. To a painter, rewriting is like looking at a painting and adding a bit of color here, additional brush strokes there, sometimes adding something in ... or removing something that doesn't fit. I saw my mother, who was a painter, standing in front of her easel with a brush in one hand, looking at the painting she was working on, making the necessary changes.

But rewriting isn't always fun. ...
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For me, the characters are what create stories, plots appear as the story moves along. I know that's backwards for many writers, and I know I'm not the only one who writes the way I do. Teresa Geering, author of the popular The Eye of Erasmus writes the way I do, beginning with character.

If I lose sight of the character (who he or she is), then I lose sight of the story, and it stops. I've recently had that experience and had to take a break from the story until I caught a clear vision of who...
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If you've been reading my blog, you know I attach a lot of importance to characters and character development to telling a good story. Click on the following link to read a wonderful article by MG Harris, author of the acclaimed series "The Joshua Files". If you're a writer, you'll want this one for your library.

http://www.mgharris.net/2010/04/24/motivating-your-characters-the-key-to-success-zero-moment-blog-tour-7/

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It's often called "writer's block" -- you know, when you're sitting there in front of a blank screen or sheet of paper and your mind is blank ... for days. I call it "when the well runs dry,. because that's the way it feels. I've used too much of the "water" in it, it's dry, and I have to wait until the spring replenishes it before I can write again. It's a wake up call for me to sit back, relax, and let the well replenish, which it always does.

This happens to all writers. I use it to relax, ...
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No, this isn't a travel article, it's about the few months I spent in Mexico City in 1973-74 and how I was captivated by the city. It's also the title of a poem that I wrote for my son Michael back in 1974 that was published in the magazine "Valley Views, in Chagrin Falls, Ohio later that year, about which a friend recently said "You really fell in love with Mexico City, didn't you?" Oh boy, did I ever! I am now in the middle of writing a novel about it, called "The City Has Many Faces". But ...
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As I said in a previous post, I came to writing poetry mostly by accident, when a key flew off my typewriter in the midst of a writing project. For most writing, I am typing-dependent,which meant that I pushed the project I was working on aside and wrote the following poem after coming in from a walk in my Minneapolis neighborhood.

A Song

to be sung softly in the morning or before going

to bed, to the accompaniment of a flute and an

ancient stringed instrument.

Night-coming son

moon r...

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Listening to stories is something we learn as children. To a writer, listening is vital, because stories are are everywhere, free for the taking when we take the time to listen for and to them.

It's amazing to me what I've learned over the years by listening, asking clarifying questions when appropriate, and allowing the person to tell his or her story as I sit and listen. Some years ago I wrote and published “Requiem for Blue”, a story about an ex-convict who had spent 30 years in priso...

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A simple answer is that I find them everywhere: birds, monkeys, people I meet, communities and even huge cities which, at first glance, seems impossible but in my experience, isn't. To me, “character” has first to do with meeting, then seeing the whole. One definition of character is: “The inherent complex of attributes that determine a persons moral and ethical actions and reactions” (source: WordWeb thesaurus/dictionary), which is what happens when you really get to know someone, w...

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This morning I received the following quotation in an email from Don Hill, an acquaintance in the UK. Here it is, by British storyteller Anthony Nason. 

"The storyteller who wants to make a difference faces the challenge to make their own journey of transformation. Through travelling the otherworld of stories, experiencing other cultures, places, creatures, and seeking sources of wisdom beyond their own ego, they may serve, in some ways like a shaman, as a bridge for their audiences between...
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“Words are a writer’s power tools,” says Welsh novelist Mari Strachan, “and it’s crucial to be able to use them effectively.” I couldn't possibly agree more.

When I read I have always paid attention to words – the way they sound, the way they're strung together in lines, phrases and sentences, their emotion and the images and emotions they arouse. Here is an example, from Sherman Alexie's fine novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: “My dad was trying to comfo...

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Why compassion? It boils down to this: Without compassion writing, like all human communication, devolves into dismissiveness, attack and put-down, all of which are disconnecting, and ultimately dehumanizing. I do not like writing that treats human beings and the world they live in, as things to be manipulated, played with and destroyed. Psychologically speaking, a person who does that is called a sociopath, a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of m...

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I recently ran across a quote that perfectly describes my experience with writing short stories and working on a novel, both of which I am doing. The quote is from novelist and short story writer Haruki Murakami, and is in the Introduction to the English edition of his short story collection "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman".

"To put it in the simplest possible terms," he writes, "I find writing novels a challenge, writing short stories a joy. If writing  novels is like planting a forest, then wr...
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When a friend asked me the other day what role humility plays in creating art, I responded that I think it plays an important role. But when I looked the word up in several dictionaries, I found the definitions less than satisfying: “The defining characteristic of an unpretentious and modest person, someone who does not think that he or she is better or more important than others.” Others are: “Modesty, lacking pretense, not believing that you are superior to others,” and “Shifting...

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When I write a poem, it is a way of seeing and distilling what I see in the simplest, clearest and most expressive way possible. When I write a story or a novel, I can be as expansive as I want, but when I write a poem, I try to boil it all down. Not all poets do that. Nikos Kazantzakis, the great Greek-Cretan novelist and poet, wrote "The Odyssey, a Modern Sequel" in the form of a poem, 824 pages long! The language and imagery are incredibly rich. I recall reading it nearly forty years ago a...
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The simplest answer is to begin and never stop, because it's in writing that we develop our skills. The problem with many "wannabees" is quitting the minute discouragement arrives, and just like the next hour and the next day, it will arrive.

What's the best way to guard against being defeated by discouragement? Read books by great writers. And read about them. In the early days, I read everything I could lay my hands on about well-known writers and their experience. I bought every single issu...
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Kokopelli has always been one of my favorite images. He celebrates, he dances, he is playful, and he gets me to seeing and exploring things I wouldn't ordinarily see and explore. Whenever I hear his whistle, I've learned to follow it.

This image is from a painting by my good friend Paul Bauck, and I treasure it. Paul was kind enough to gift me with a digital image of it before we left Seattle for Sapporo, Japan a little less than a year ago.



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This is where I talk about writing, how I do it, where I get my ideas, what inspires me, why I write, and who my favorite writers and poets are. I post whenever I have something I want to write about, so sometimes you may find a whole string of posts, and sometimes you won't find anything for a week or more. Feel free to leave comments and ask for a response; I do respond, especially to people who are new at this writing craft. It takes time and patience, so keep at it. Believe me, it's the o...
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