So How Come YOU Know So Much?

“The airline industry has spent untold millions on quieter airplanes and noise mitigation around airports. Telecoms lose money on the copper wire landlines maintained to comply with universal-service requirements. If corporations want to dance in the discothèque, there’s a cover charge called the public good.” Rumble Seat, Dan Neil (My Favorite Auto Feature Writer) May […]

Sustainable Comedy and the Folly of Capitalism

For years, economists have posited that prosperity requires growth, with environmental damage as the regrettable but unavoidable consequence. A growing number of critics are now challenging this equation, though, calling for a radical revamping of the economic system. Nils Klawitter My Cowboy Cadillac and the Place I’ve Called Home for Near Four Decades I’ve […]

Market Testing Narrative Or How I Celebrated My Vegetative State of Mind

Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data New York Times May 6, 2013 Front Page (Below the Fold) Time heals all things. Yesterday while flying back from Seattle I choked down this front pager from the NYT on the notion of using data before the making of a script into a […]

The New Narrative is a Comedy

I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking. Tennessee Williams 1981 The Writers Desk Time comes up again and again in conversation. We reserve in this go-go era a respect for original, finely crafted narrative. As it stands we are at a humanitarian crossroads. Ancient myths are vaporizing before our […]

The Truth of the Thing

“I asked Norman Mailer which of the other art forms he thought being a novelist was closest to. “Acting,” he said. Under the Influence, Andrew O’Hagen. April 27, 2013 Financial Times Following the River, Guided by the Light WHAT WE USE Most of us are familiar with the list of elements that the novelist utilizes […]

When Time Stood Still

Speed as Histrionics I set out on the outline of Hot Spring Honeymoon on January 1, 2012. I’d finished Bankrupt Heart in June of 2011. By finish I mean the manuscript was completed and the only thing left was to scrub the thing for errors in spelling and grammar. I rested my imaginations muscle for […]

Close Your Eyes and You’ll Miss YOU…Tomorrow I’ll….

Blinded By the Light… What is your narrative? How much of the story do you know by heart? How much of your narrative remains hidden from you? Thought experiment! “I’ll never get that job. I’m no good at math. I’m always late.” Some of our narratives are harmless while others are not. […]

Economic Tragedy Played as a Comedy

The formation of the eurozone and a half-century of relentless globalization have altered the global economic landscape, rendering once-proven policies ineffective.” Kaushik Basu aka…Doug McKechnie The comic novel is an exploration guided by discovery. The author hunts for the funny side of phenomena. We can’t tweeze out the least preferred parts of life and […]

Fill in the Blanks

After drafting a new chapter I return to the previous three. I’m keeping a sharp lookout for a drop off in energy. It may come from going too long on a topic not central to the plot. I have something like sixteen separate scenes in the four chapters. So, I will break up […]

Comedy as Balancing Act

Comedy requires concision. As I’ve been building my story I’ve had to battle filling in enough narrative to make the mind’s eye see the scene while maintaining the pace of the story so as not to derail the momentum. It is a brutal dance of first building the chapter and then removing anything that does […]