“If you don't have time to read,

you don't have the time

(or the tools)

to write.

Simple as that.” 
― Stephen King

What are you reading now? What have you read recently?

Do you get as excited about your favorite author’s new book as you do about a new movie?

When was the last time you shared a book with a friend?

If these questions bring pleasant or passionate thoughts to mind, you may have the tools to write.

We need as many of our fellows’ thoughts and words as we can gather in and reshape into our own stories. King’s plots and Dickens’ characters. Austin’s romance and Asimov’s visions. We need Hawking’s history of the universe and Gould’s history of life.

What am I reading? Last night I finished Philip Margolin’s Gone But Not Forgotten. I’m in the middle of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. And I just got Carl Sagan’s The Demon-haunted World  and Pale Blue Dot. Which to begin first? It’s marvelous to live in the midst of plenty.

Look beside your bed, beside your favorite chair. Check your e-reader. Are you surrounded by humanity’s discoveries and dreams? If not, then you must visit your library, my friend. Or your favorite bookstore. It matters not whether brick and mortar or virtual. Just do it. READ.

Count the Squares

Count the squares

I’ve been thinkin’ again. You don’t know this about me. But I think a lot. Then again, you probably do know this about me, because it’s true of you, too. It’s the human condition—we think a lot. And I’ve been thinkin’ about what it is we think about.

My first inclination is to think that we spend most of our time thinking about problems, but I don’t think that’s true. I think we think mostly about solutions. Even in leisure moments we seek out problems so we can think about solutions. That’s how we read the papers. The front page so we can think about solutions to weighty state and national and world problems. 

But it’s the puzzles that we spend more time actually focusing our thoughts on. And the harder the Sudoku, the better. When we do solve the crossword puzzle, we enjoy our success, but not for long. A solution found sends us looking for another problem to solve.

The better mouse trap is never invented to make money or even to catch a better mouse. It’s the solution to the next problem.

Even fiction writers should get their facts straight.

I just stumbled on the following phrase in a murder mystery I’m reading: “woolen black cotton suit.” And stumbled is the right verb to use. It threw me right out of the story. If the suit was cotton, it could not have been woolen. Conversely, if the suit were woolen, it could not have been made of cotton.

It might be fiction but those small details should be correct. When an author takes his time (and the reader’s time) to describe loading and firing a flintlock long gun, that description should be accurate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn7lxMP_qBc

A bush hog or brush hog mows, it doesn’t dig. The beautiful hibiscus flower has no scent. And you don’t use a silencer on a revolver.

You can buy something identified as a silencer for revolvers, but as a former police officer once described them—“They’re as useless as tits on a bull.” And for those of you who do not know…bulls do have teats, but they serve no useful purpose.

If you’re a writer and don’t know first-hand about something, look it up, ask someone who knows, use something else that you do know about.

Think about it.