Writing
Eric San Juan
July 5, 2013
Way back when I first wrote Stuff Every Husband Should Know and contributed to Geek Wisdom, I pitched the idea of doing a beer book to my editor at Quirk Books. I can kinda write, and I like beer, so why not bring the two together for a beer book? I was given a dose of reality. You have no history of beer writing, he said, so pitching a beer book would be difficult. Made sense. I may write, but that doesn’t mean I could suddenly do a great book on growing great tulips. (I could.) I needed experience. So I started blogging about beer. It was a way to get my feet wet and start building cred in the beer world. To be honest,…
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Eric San Juan
June 28, 2013
Blogs are like great weights affixed to your neck, or rather, like a 200-pound sets of car keys. You don’t want to carry the damn things around, but the car won’t start without them. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged here. Probably should have stayed current. Should have been updating all along. Could have talked about this project or that, or merely talked about James Gandolfini passing away and why Bruce Springsteen is probably better than I give him credit for and why the Akira manga is crazy good. Yet the truth is, I’d rather be working on new projects than talking about them. The other truth is, even though it’s seen as your authorial duty to plug your upcoming books or whatever else…
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Eric San Juan
January 14, 2013
I’ve already mentioned that I am writing about Hurricane Sandy from my perspective. Swell, I suppose, but more important than that is trying to tell the story of other people who lived through the storm. My Sandy story, after all, is pretty tame compared to what many went through. And it really is. Yes, the Hurricane Sandy videos I posted seem kinda neat if you didn’t live through it, but that’s all they were. Kinda neat. Prior to the videos the water was two feet HIGHER. It sounds kind of nuts, and yes, the night of the storm was WILD, but we still survived. We lived. We moved on. But what do you do when you CAN’T simply move on? What do you do when…
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Eric San Juan
January 7, 2013
Chuck Wendig brings us an excellent blog post called 25 Things You Should Know About Plot. It’s about … well, I bet you’ve already figured that part out. Here’s an excerpt: Let Characters Do They Heavy Lifting Characters will tell you your plot. Even better: let them run and they’ll goddamn give it to you on a platter. Certainly plot can happen from an external locus of control — but you’re not charting the extinction of the dinosaurs or the lifecycle of the slow loris. Plot is like Soylent Green: it’s made of people. Characters say things, do things, and that creates plot. It really can be that simple. Authentic plot comes from internal emotions, not external mechanics. The whole post is full of great…
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Eric San Juan
January 3, 2013
When I was asked to engage in some first person journalism about being at the Jersey Shore for Hurricane Sandy, I was both excited to do it and a little hesitant. Excited because, like everyone at the Shore who experienced the storm firsthand, I wanted to share my experience with others. After all, that’s what you DO when it comes to life-altering experienced. You talk about them (even if just with a few videos). But hesitant because, unlike so many people in my area, including friends and family, my family and I came through okay. Oh, we lost some cars and have had our home life turned a little upside down, but we still have a home to go home to. So I hesitated. But…
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