Tag Archive: inspiration

Goodbye, Ray Bradbury

I’m not much for mourning celebrity deaths. I generally don’t care that you were in a few movies or TV shows, or that you wrote some catchy song I haven’t heard in six years. Such passings are sad, but they have little impact on my life. But Ray Bradbury, who passed away this morning at the age of 91, was more than a mere celebrity author to me. He was a tremendous influence on me both growing up as well as in later years when I began to pursue writing more seriously; a man whose work informed me, inspired me, and solidified my long clung-to dream of being a writer. Bradbury was a special kind of wordsmith. Unlike most modern authors, he rarely dabbled in…
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J.R.R. Tolkien is the reason why I write

I’ve no interest in writing epic fantasy, have gotten past the days when I wanted to construct a complex mythology, and hell, haven’t even rolled a 20-sided die in many years. Yet I would not be writing today in any capacity were it not for the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Middle-Earth first entered my consciousness in the sixth grade or so. The Hobbit was assigned reading. Unlike most students, I didn’t consider assigned reading a form of torture. (Well, except when the books sucked — which they often did.) I liked reading, and the books we had to read were often excellent. The Outsiders, Lord of the Flies, The Pigman, 1984, and many other books I still cherish today were introduced to me through school…
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On Writing: Good Days, Bad Days

Sometimes writing sucks. On some days every stroke of your pen or clack of your keyboard results in what can only charitably be described as crap. Crap. It happens. And on other days magic spills out of your keyboard, and even the roughest of rough drafts are close to final. Again, it happens. After a week or more of the former, today I am enjoying the latter. That’s not to say that every word I’m spinning is gold — it’s up to my editor on my current project to make that call — it’s to say that decent words are coming easily and without struggle. The process has been painless. The last week, though? Horrid. I had to drag every last phrase out of me,…
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