Seasonal Confusion: A Novelist’s Malady?
I am not sure why I feel the need to write about this, but I have been suffering from a vague feeling of disorientation for several weeks, and I have just figured out what is causing it. I don’t know what season it is. If you live in a place like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I grew up, this is never a problem. The seasons are clearly delineated, with the gradually warming rainy days of spring, when everything turns green and flowers bloom, then the long, hot, summer days, with lightning bugs in the evening and the whine of mosquitos in the night, followed by the cry of the locusts and the gaudy colors of turning leaves of fall, gradually shading into the short days, cold nights, and occasional snows of winter. On the coast of Southern California, where I have Read more…
Why Do I Procrastinate?
I ran across an online discussion today addressing why we procrastinate as writers. My comment went on so long a realized that this was something I should address on my blog. So here goes. I spent 20 years procrastinating in regards to my writing. Hell, I spent nearly 50 years procrastinating if you start counting from when I determined that I wanted to write historical fiction until the time I successfully published my first novel, Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery. What I find interesting is that in general I am not a procrastinator. I learned in 4th grade (best grade school teacher ever) that the students who buckled down and did their work first thing ended up with plenty of guilt free time to goof off, and I have pretty much applied that concept through the rest Read more…
The Streets of San Francisco: Detoured, diverted, and derailed by historical research
Several weeks ago I had carved out a few days for uninterrupted writing, and I was firmly committed to making significant progress on my new book. I already had the first five chapters written (about 10,000 words) of Uneasy Spirits, the sequel to my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, and my goal was to get another 4-5 chapters done. I started out well, briefly reviewing my outline, and then I began writing the chapter where my protagonist, Annie Fuller, was to travel from the O’Farrell Street boarding house she owned to the residence of Simon and Arabella Frampton, spiritualists she is investigating. This would require her to take a horse car from her neighborhood north of Market Street to the Rincon Hill neighborhood, south of Market, where the Framptons were renting a house. I started on the first paragraph, and Read more…
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