Now that January’s come, and nearly gone, we know the Mayan calendar was wrong. Not to worry—this is something that any writer knows—the end of the story hasn’t been written yet. I’ve been writing for decades now. One of the earliest lessons I learned, once I’d turned from short stories to novels (I’ve written several, but The Passion of the Titans is the first to interest a publisher), is that writers are near-sighted. Oh, I’m not denying that there are visionaries out there, but when I write, I may have a plan for my characters that is never realized. Like in life, unseen circumstances intervene. Some writers, I’ve been told, sketch out the storyline ahead of time and know just what is going to happen. Like the Mayan, however, they might be surprised. At least I am. I start a novel with an end in mind: my personal 2012. That end suggests a beginning, for there’s a story here to be told. The means of getting from th...
Blog of a struggling writer.