I have to protect myself. From myself. The world provides too many things to do. It’s too easy to while away a day dragging a finger across an iPhone screen on a Twitter scroll. It’s too easy to wonder what made that dog seem so happy, or that cheeseburger so succulent, on Facebook. Plus, too …
Tag: writing
Paydirt and Paved Roads
Last night I learned that the term “paydirt” wasn’t invented by some overheated local sports writer who decided that the dirt underneath the grass in the end zone was dirt that paid, even though it was probably a high school game and the only payoff would have been “under the table.” It was the term for …
Little Things Mean Too Much
At this stage of life, one considers strictly important matters. One questions matters he has blithely accepted for decades. For instance, the word “like” is often used to mean “lack,” as in the great line from Roger Miller’s “Dang Me”: “I like fourteen dollars having twenty-seven cents.” One thinks, why is it “like”? And, then, …
Where Might the Suspects Be?
Paralysis. Groping for some coherence. Doing menial chores just as a substitute for creativity, in the desperate hope that something will arise, something out of thin air or gray matter. Pairing socks. Washing dishes. Paying bills. Biding time till something, anything, happens along. He picked up his guitar, started strumming, but he wasn’t of a …
Writing Its Ownself
Nothing about writing is absolute. General rules of thumb abound. Discipline is required. It’s keeping score at a baseball game. The only way to do it is what works for you. Some etch a path around the diamond. Some rely on little dots and lines. Some worry about the balls and strikes. Some don’t. Few …
Upon Further Review …
Until I did it occasionally a year ago and regularly this year, I hadn’t written about a high school football game in more than fifteen years. Back then, I thought myself quite the whiz kid. I could keep running accounts of the game and cumulative totals at the same time. Then I could talk to …
My Fingers Are Faster
This sharp little number has speeded me up. It’s a transformer, capable of serving both my laptop and tablet needs. I don’t fully understand my tablet needs. I’ve had a laptop. I’ve had an iPhone. Now I’ve got the capability of existing in between. Middle Earth, maybe. What could be finer than to be in …
A Sticking Key
I’m grateful for this Sony laptop. It’s lasted longer than any of my previous writing apparati. The wear and tear of writing about distant events took its toll on a Dell, a Toshiba, and another brand whose name escapes me now. I’ve also been a writer – a sportswriter for most of that time – …
Try, Try Again
I’m taking a break. I’ve been working on the thirty-eighth chapter of the first draft of a novel about an evil politician and a good cop who have known each other all their lives. It’s slowed as it nears its end. When last I left Denny Frawley, he was debating the incumbent governor and this …
No Time to Travel
She was a tiny woman, skin tightly drawn around her face, remarkably unwrinkled yet somehow looking old, as if she spent a lot of time screaming to stretch it out. The fat man hoped to God she wasn’t sitting on his row. Once he had flown on an almost weekly basis, an average of fifty …
Nightrider's Lament 