Any Shiny Thing - Life after 50

Midlife Fiction

Completing Your Daily To-do List Is Not the Same as Living

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I’m so anal I used to have a list of values (Recognition, Relevance, Time, Money, Service) by which I would measure whether I was living a good life. It was only several years into having developed this list that I realized ALL OF THE VALUES PERTAINED TO MY JOB. None of them addressed the pursuit of family/friends, artistic interests, health, love or leisure. So for all the list-makers  who think that completing your to-do list is synonymous with living a full and satisfying life, here’s the risk you are taking. And thanks to Janet Reid and Toni McGee Causey for reminding me not to sleepwalk through my one precious life.

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Writing Hurtful Things about Family and Friends

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For those of you who are writing memoirs and/or personal essays, Writer’s Digest offers some tips here for not nuking your relationships in the process.

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Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Rules for Writing a Short Story

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writer, writing, author, indie pub, self pubThe renowned Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5, proposed eight commandments for writing the perfect short story. I think they’re useful for any work of fiction.  [Read more…]

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Revenge is a Bad Reason to Create a Character

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Did you ever want to get even with somebody by putting them in your book? Don’t waste your time. 

I always regret it when I create a character because I have a beef with someone or because there’s somebody who is so appalling or frustrating that I just have to write about them. They always end up looking cartoonish or pointless. You can’t put a person in a story for your own gratification alone, which totally blows the idea of getting even with anybody through your writing.

Bummer, huh? So here’s your bottom line: if it doesn’t SERVE THE STORY, it shouldn’t be in there.

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