A big shoutout and thank you to the editors over at Deep Overstock for selecting a piece of mine for their Spring issue: Superheroes. I was excited to provide a piece for this issue as my grandfather was one of the artists who worked on the Captain America comics in the late forties. I've grown …
Tag: Writing
Morality Sopranos Style
I've recently returned to watching The Sopranos and I find it oddly still resonating 13 years after it ended. As a fan of mob stories I shouldn't be too surprised, but in such changed world from the start of the millennium I do find it interesting. Maybe nothing's changed, maybe everything has, but one thing …
(Not) Writing In a Pandemic
I originally was going to call this post, "Writing In a Pandemic." Unfortunately I haven't been doing much of that. At first I was really down on myself for letting all this free time go to waste, but as I talked to more writers I found that this seems to be the situation for many. …
I’m a Terrible Writer
There, I said it. Though I feel I may need to clarify things. My writing is not terrible, I'm just very bad at sitting down to write. If anything these last few weeks inside have made me realize all the excuses I've made for not finishing this or starting that are just excuses. Time is …
The Key to Great Character Introductions
I spotted this gem on the interwebs. It comes from Nathan Bransford's awesome blog. https://blog.nathanbransford.com/2020/01/nail-every-characters-first-impression This has some great advice for introducing characters and is something I know I fumble a bit with. It's really important to make everything a part of the story. Nobody wants to read through pages of stuff that the writer …
That New Novel Smell
It's NaNoWriMo again. Man that came up fast, didn't we just do this last year? Actually I have never done a NaNoWriMo challenge. I guess I am this month. I had a unique idea come to me in my sleep and figured I'd give a crack at getting it all down. Along with that, I …
From the Blogs
I came across this piece on Anne R. Allen's blog. I know I have experienced a host of starts and stalls with my writing. My family and friends are always there with support, especially my wife. Still I can see how for some that might not be the case. Read on and see: How Well-Intentioned …
A Little Sh*t Can’t Hurt
As a librarian I can tell you many people will religiously read the same authors' books. We see this constantly as the request list for the latest Patterson or Steele novels head into the hundreds. As a reader myself I've read a familiar author's book that once I was done said, "that was a waste …
Avoiding Emotional Cliches
I came across this great piece of advice from Anne R Allen's great blog. How to Avoid Cliched Emotional Responses We've all fallen into the trap at least once. Cliches are easy and sometime our brains just don't have anything more to say about something. One of my favorite things is to mix up the …
From the Blogs: Writing Yourself Into a Corner
I can see this as more of an issue with seat-of-their-pants writers. Still I can imagine sitting over an outline and realizing that it's not going where you need and or want. Scott Hale, over at The Creative Pen has some great advice for dealing with that. https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2019/04/19/why-writing-yourself-into-a-corner-can-improve-your-writing/
Vincent A. Alascia 