I'm open minded and enjoy talking to people about their Native ancestry. Folks get comfortable with me when they know I'm not going to judge them for admiring Native people, so they share their family lore. If they're writers, they'll likely mention a project they're working on where they have characters who are Native. Out [...]
Category: The Rewrite Life
The 12 Year Journey of Unsettled Between
I spend a lot of time thinking about love, and what I'm about to discuss here is in the vein of love. But a love for cohesiveness, a love that desires modalities in cooperation rather than competition. Certainly, it took the very pessimistic concepts around Baudrillard's philosophy to engender my thoughts on this subject. But [...]
The Crocodile, the Goat, and the Unicorn: Unique Approaches to Character Development by Unifying Karpman’s Drama Triangle, Evolutionary Astrology, and Stanislavski’s Method Acting
There I am, like you, and so many writers, sitting at my computer and starting a new writing project. I'm drawing up characters because this story has been running through mind for years and it's finally ready to go onto a page. Since I already have a working idea of who my main character is [...]
#WritersLife: When Writers Dream of Characters in Their Novel
#WritersLife was the first thought I had when I woke. But I couldn't shake the deep depression taking control of me. I felt an immense sadness. It felt like I was so inadequate that I didn't matter to anyone. My life was so pointless and meaningless that no one would ever want to connect with [...]
On Writing an “Indian Child Welfare” Novel & Other Grand Adventures
I hiked into the Grand Canyon. I must've been in my late twenties, maybe early thirties. It started out as a walk to look over the rim. I had camped the night before in a tent at one of the sites and woke early (probably about 5am). I was there with a friend and she [...]
Novel DNA: How Writing Chapters can Change the World
What to do with a great idea? Let's sit down and map out a novel. Writing in the dark is a popular way of writing short stories. We get an idea. We pull out the laptop. We write until everything is on the page. As we write, we don't know where the story will lead [...]
Colloquial Traits in Tribal Regionalism
Often I sit here in front of this computer and think about how to capture the voice of a narrator. Voice is the darkness around the thief, his soft footsteps, and his choice of victim. There is nothing innocent about what we writers do. We're persuasive colonizers seeking to intrude on your sensibilities. We're convincing--softly [...]
Lies, Love, & Magic: How Voice was Hijacked by Editor Mysticism & Workshop Critique BS!
The sought after and mysterious "voice" of writing. You watch editors salivate like Derridean defeatists about how magical voice can be when it "makes your foot tap to the rhythm." Aww, how romantic. We are lovely romantic beings who need magic in our lives. Well, I'm about to take the magic out of the what, where, [...]
When the Community has a Voice
Let's say you're in the office and you're telling a story about someone. First you talk about what the person did. Maybe it's something juicy, like a secret infidelity with a prison inmate, or maybe it's something subtle, like they moved away from home. Then you go on to tell about something more recent, like, "Just [...]
Seeing through Layers like Blankets on a Cold Night
My father was am immigrant from Mexico. My mother a full blood Kiowa/Cherokee from Oklahoma. They worked the peanut and cotton fields when my sisters and I were young. I remember ducking the large rolling water sprayers in the fields; I remember the heat coming from the dirt onto my bare feet; and I remember living [...]
Main Character Slam, Drop, Kick!
Revision is a little punk b#?ch! There I am toiling away on the second draft, almost to the end of the novel and starting to think about characters in the novel (mentally preparing for the "sweeps" portion of my revision process), and then I come to realize my main character is an asshole. I toil, yes. [...]
#1 Writing Rule: Be Teachable
We writers area equal parts ego and vulnerable. The cliché is to develop a "tough skin" over the years and be able to take criticism. But we all think we're geniuses, and we are. Brilliant beasts who are magical at hiding our softest parts behind a shield of "I already know" and "You just don't understand [...]
