Author Archives: Admin
Activitism
That’s not a word. I just made it up. One of the most important lessons of writing fiction, whether in a novel, short story, screenplay or play, is the word “active.” The characters, especially the main character, must be active. … Continue reading
Lines
Sometimes I’ll read something by a well-known, lauded author and have absolutely no idea what he or she is talking about. I just finished an old review by John Updike of an Alan Hollinghurst novel. I couldn’t tell if it … Continue reading
A line
I was walking down the street and passed the playground of a public school. The teachers had apparently told all the children to line up, with the boy at one end of the line and the girls at the other. … Continue reading
Bully
I’m going to the library today because I realized, from the small class I took, that you must absolutely have a place or a space to go when you want to write. Sometimes, when you’re younger, that “space” can be … Continue reading
New Born, by Ella Hickson
This got a tremendous review from the New York Times, and it was mostly sold out — you could get a seat here and there on different nights, which is how I got a single seat toward the back of … Continue reading
Rage quitting and other perils of the modern world.
One thing I learned from my recent “Intro to Fiction” class, where they teach the absolute basics of attempting to write fiction, and which I took as a last ditch effort to kick-start myself back into a writing mode, is … Continue reading
Greed was good.
Michael Douglas was attractive. I don’t know that was ever a great actor but he had a style which is primarily what famous and good looking actors really need. He is most famous for playing the role at the left. … Continue reading
The minutiae of a writer’s life
This is so typical of the scraps to which writers must cling in order to convince themselves that they are writers, and not hobbyists or imposters. I don’t know why actors have no problem with this. An actor may never … Continue reading
Art Isn’t Easy, by Daniel Okrent
I’d have to go through my playbills and figure out when it was that Stephen Sondheim and his husband sat down next to my friend. He (Sondheim, not my friend), died in late 2021 so I’m thinking it was before … Continue reading
Midnight Cowboy, by James Leo Herlihy
For an unsuccessful novel, it has certainly been published enough times. According to Goodreads, there are 60 editions of this short and intense novel and I suppose it’s almost certainly because of the amazing movie that was made of it, … Continue reading