There is a certain freedom in not caring about certain things in certain ways. It’s not apathy — at least in the sense that many people think of when they hear the word. I’m talking about the freedom in realizing that sometimes the best thing to do is your own thing. It goes well beyond […]

Yesterday, I listened to this interview with Bud Smith. (The interview starts at the 30 minute mark if you’re interested.) Bud is a writer, and his attitude about it all is quite refreshing. The quick version of Bud’s outlook on writing: Just make something. Who cares about a publisher. Just make something cool every day. […]

First: credit where it’s due. This post was totally inspired by this post by Andrew Conti. Andrew’s views on art and other things makes his blog one of my faves out there. (If you don’t feel like reading Andrew’s post, the gist is he doesn’t get as much art done during winter as he does […]

A friend at work shared this on Twitter yesterday: Friends, over the next few days I’ll write an article called “top 10 things I learned in 2015.” Will you write your own? I want to read it! — Ken Tabor (@KenTabor) December 29, 2015 So what the hell — why not accept the challenge? But […]

I sometimes have those days when I think about easy. I think about an old series I started, that rough draft of a second novel tucked away that feels like something I jettisoned that could now come in handy. It’s comforting thinking about how — while challenging enough — the book was not hard to […]

[This is an entry I started writing last week and set aside. Then, a couple days ago at work, I chatted with a friend about writing. Specifically, we began talking about John Irving’s love of writing about writers — and how it mostly bores us. So…I decided to not scrap this entry.] Earlier today, I […]

This Brain Pickings piece from April seems fitting for Labor Day in the states. In it, Cheryl Strayed says of writing: Writing is hard for every last one of us… Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. […]

It’s quiet out there right now. It’s been quiet for hours and there are still hours of quiet to come before light breaks and the day begins. That’s what happens when you wake up at 2:30 in the morning and think, “I can go back to sleep for a few more hours, or…I can get […]

Day job work has been busy this summer, so I set aside the second draft of the current novel and tinkered with the last novel I finished. I never gave it a fair run with submission, so a little tightening was in order before putting it back out there. That novel is ready, and September […]

As a kid, making sure my feet were covered with my blanket made me feel safe from monsters that lurked at the foot of the bed. Making sure the blankets were pulled up around my neck ensured nothing would open a jugular vein and drain me as I slept. But there was something even more […]

I’ve written about shutting out distractions before. It’s a bit of an obsession with me — especially in a time when we have more things than ever that can be distracting. These things aren’t always bad, even though many make them out to be. Social media is wonderful; when it feels like too much, there’s […]

I listened to Marc Maron’s interview with President Obama on Monday. If you’re not familiar with Marc Maron, here’s a quick version: a stand up comic busts his ass, hosts a show on Comedy Central, but never gets the breaks other comics around him seem to get. Throw in a struggle with addiction, and Maron […]

Peter Salerno was my great grandfather. He came to America from Italy with very little and ended up doing well for himself. The quick version goes like this: He went out west and followed cattle trains. He bought cattle, butchered them, and sold the cuts to cowboys. Somewhere along the way, he came in to […]