fiction

Everyone asks me how I got started into writing. I wish I had some cool story to tell, but the truth is pretty lame. My wife and I were having a drink on our back porch and I mentioned a concept I'd been mulling over. She suggested that I write it down, and so I figured I'd make a few notes and get it out of my system. No matter how I tried though, it just wouldn't let me write it in any other way than a story. Believe me when I say I tried, but 63,000 words later I realized that I needed a chart to track the plot and personas to maintain character consistency. So I just gave up and let it write itself from that point on. As far as I'm concerned at this point, I'm just hanging on and trying to keep up.

but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and chreerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?

Why did you leave? Am I not good enough? Where did you go? When did it happen? ..Who are you?

Outside of the usual bar or nightclub, it's not every day that I get a drink bought for me-at least not by strangers and certainly not on a workday. On that Saturday, in September 2010, it was from three separate individuals.

The fictitious kleptomaniac's only crime was stealing imaginations

C.J. had once believed that he understood who he was, what he was about, what he was capable of. But when the moment came to act upon these convictions, he discovered that his knowledge of self was faulty. Had his lack of killer instinct been a momentary lapse, first time jitters? Or was there more to it than that? If not the fearless, remorseless man he supposed himself to be, then just who was he?

There is only one kind of immorality in fiction, and that is when you write badly.

Creativity is a commodity and derives its value only in how energy is spent.

To give herself a measure of credible autonomy, she had decided to invent a husband. Then, in a subsequent flash of inspiration, she had just as quickly killed him off.

[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers -- namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out -- don't tell us a character is happy, show us how she screams "yay" and jumps up and down for joy -- when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language.

Ironically, [living in] communities of the like - minded is one of the greatest dangers of today _s globalized world. And it _s happening everywhere, among liberals and conservatives, agnostics and believers, the rich and the poor, East and West alike. We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about other clusters of people. In my opinion, one way of transcending these cultural ghettos is through the art of storytelling

Picture this broad: 22 going on 18. Half the guys in my class would have given their left testicle to date her. This cupcake is the guidance counselor the principal has assigned me. Miss Boyle is her name. We all call her __iss Bubbly Water._ Imagine the teasing I have to endure from my friends. Not to mention what it__ like, sitting across from this Barbie Doll every Thursday afternoon, watching her cross and uncross her legs, while she__ lecturing me about__et this: __taying focused._ Right! My pants are on fire, and she__ handing me a crash course in Psych 101!

It was as if-this is something I thought of only later, of course-she was gently peeling bcd one layer after another hat covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.

With one perfect kiss on one perfect English summer afternoon, we understand the meaning of all the colors of every rainbow, forevermore.

When writing fiction, you learn to only put things and characters in, that are going to progress your story. There is something to be learned about that approach in real life

My whore of a brother has done it again." "Then, as always, orders me to clean up the mess." "I think I hate him." Poseidon to his brother, Zeus.

Remember that human wisdom is madness in the eyes of God. But if we listen to the child who lives in our soul, our eyes will grow bright.

I've always felt that good writing does not have to be literary.