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I love the fact that stories make my real life look like the dim cousin with snot on his cheek. Things that happen in stories don’t happen in the real lives of real people, and that’s kind of the point. Stories are so unreal we can sink into them without squirming....

I spent a good part of last night wondering why mice can’t use bazookas. Well, I say that I was wondering about this, but that may be a little misleading. My wife would probably say that was whining rather than wondering. Mouse-bazooka capability doesn’t seem...

I like experiencing things more than I like hearing about them, with the exception of earthquakes and family dinners. I imagine you do too. Most people prefer to smell and taste a homemade brownie or two rather than hear someone read the list of ingredients on a...

I spend a lot of time editing right now. I suck at it because I’ve been through the story in question so often I can now no longer see what’s on the page. That’s a literal statement. I can’t see a misplaced comma any better than I could see Blackbeard’s ghost. A...

Today I'm struggling with a title. I've read that Hemingway went through hundreds of possible titles for each book. I've only been through 100 or so, but every one of them reeks of inadequacy. I need a title that compels people to read my story--they must be incapable...

I wrote the end of the middle of a book last night. This is the part where I drink some schnapps and celebrate, because writing the middle of a long story beats me down. When I write the beginning, I crackle with fun and excitement, because it’s all new and anything...

In my younger days, the process of writing seemed premeditated to me. When I sat down to write, I knew where I wanted to end up. It was a matter of building myself a bridge of words and paragraphs to get there. But I struggled quite a lot in those days. My paragraphs...