Author Archives: Susan

This time I’m adding in–not much, and it’s still a bit heavy, but I just felt the end should be a bit more wrapped up.  Throughout the linear part of the narrative, the sun is setting, the runner is approaching, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Another small example of annihilating ‘lazy’ words: Original: A scorpion skittered across the porch, stopped in front of the rocker, fled from Yolanda’s sandal as she lifted her foot to annihilate it.  It had noticed the change in light, the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Old Version: Joe felt the knife with every hot slap of his feet against the hard packed dirt.  Remembered standing there and pain urging its way into the numbness that had immediately followed the strikes of blade that froze him … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Except reading, of course, and I think it’s time to put Tropic of Cancer back on the shelf; I’ve made little progress towards learning to like it and it has inhibited my starting something else. But writing it’s been, to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

In A Bottle of Beer, there is really no dialogue.  I’d realized this early on, kept it in mind as  I wrote, but found little reason to call it into the story.  Afterwards, I wondered why. Dialogue is an excellent … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The Mac was tuned to the Hypercompendia station all day while I wandered between editing A Bottle of Beer and everything else I do in life with the everything else taking a back seat.  It is amazing how much I … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Per gentle suggestions from The Grim Reaper, I am slashing at sentences, eliminating words that mean nothing, phrases that may sing, yet they are merely refrain.  It has dawned on me that if I saved into story all that I’ve … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Now here’s what it’s about, from a published playwright, producer, professor, writer: Topsy-turvy normalcy – characterized either by mania or by depression or by alternating mania and depression  = manic-depressive Sure describes a lot of writers I know, including myself. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Interesting dilemma today.  There’s a story sitting in Storyspace that I’ve pulled and nudged and felt and yet it’s not working for some reason.  It has depth, it has some serious meaning, and yet to get it to move is … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Editing can become a never-ending process.  It certainly takes a lot more time to rewrite than it does to assemble the initial story into a cohesive narrative whole with plot, pacing, tension, conflicts, climax, resolution and some healthy doses of … Continue reading → Continue reading →