I seem to have always been drawn to fiction you might say is "out there." This seems to have had an influence on the way I write my own fiction. I can't point to any particular approach or technique I've adopted from the authors I admire (beyond the typically derivative affectations common to most beginning…
I've heard some writers complain (and I've been one of them) that after a day at work they find it almost impossible to write. In particular, I've heard writers like me--those who hold down day jobs as writers and editors--lament that after a day of writing or editing, the last thing they want to do…
One dictum I coined to keep my writing on track is this: Do things in prose the Hollywood machine cannot reproduce. For me, this means exploring characters, and even objects and other phenomena, from the inside out. It's writing that trades the forward momentum of plot for the deep dive into character or situation. It's…
This week I've been busy cutting, honing, and polishing a chapter of Housebreaking the Muse. The editor of a well-regarded literary and arts journal has kindly agreed to have a look, so naturally I want to put my best work forward. The process has once again reminded me of my attitudes about fiction, which are…
309 Days Remaining ... This post reports my recent progress on Housebreaking the Muse and describes some major reworking to the novel's opening section. Several weeks ago, I began to realize the opening section of the novel was just too disjointed. Because of the many narrative entities and the multiple universal planes at work in…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 