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*Finding Your Fiction: Concise Steps To Writing Successful Fiction
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Tag Archives: Where the River Splits
Why I Stopped Revising My First Novel
Over a 35-years span, Roobala Take Me Home was rewritten, revised, reworked, and partly re-imagined so many times that I’ve lost count. Despite my best efforts to stay current and true to my ever developing self, Roobala Take Me Home inevitably, like all novels, turned into a historical document. Even “historical” novels are rooted in the imagination of the writer looking back. A historian from 1980 looking back at 1900 has a different perspective than … Continue reading
Posted in Write
Tagged dreams, Ficiton Writing, First Novel, Jeffrey Penn May, Pushcart Prize, Where the River Splits, Writing Ficiton
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Mountains, Streams, and Plywood Wings: How the Outdoors Influenced My Writing
Behind our new subdivision home in northwest St. Louis County, farmland stretched for miles where my two older brothers and I ran through cornfields and apple orchards, waded flooded creeks, and rode bareback. Once, on our way home, responding to our Dad’s powerful whistle, we cut through a hog pen and my foot got stuck, a hog charged, and my oldest brother pulled me to safety, leaving my shoe in the mud. Another time, while … Continue reading
Posted in Write
Tagged climbing, fly fishing, fly fishing Missouri smallmouth, Missouri streams, mountain climbing, mountains, outdoor, outdoor activities, outdoor fiction, outdoor fishing, outdoor writing, outdoors, smashwords, steams, Where the River Splits, writers, writing, Writing Ficiton
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Untitled and Unpublished – Marketing Basement Manuscripts
While cleaning out the basement, I found an unpublished and untitled manuscript, read the first page, and instantaneously launched into revision. But then I stopped and flipped through the 300-plus pages. Did I really want to do this to myself? Again! Wasn’t it just a few months ago when I had exhausted myself revising my last ms, a 30-year effort, Roobala Take Me Home, which lays dormant (again) while I try to figure out what … Continue reading
Book Review Bluntness
Recently, I read a blog, “Like the author… but” by Sharon Wildwind, in which she discusses the awkwardness of responding to a “friend’s book,” a technical writer who decided to try fiction. The book was “boring.” But Wildwind is reluctant to tell the truth. How to respond? A common dilemma. We’ve all received book recommendations or gifts, but couldn’t get past the first few pages. An online acquaintance suggested I try reading Ayn Rand and … Continue reading
Posted in Write
Tagged Ficiton Writing, fiction, fiction writing, Jeff Penn May, Jeffrey Penn May, Where the River Splits, writing, Writing Ficiton
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Confessions of a Failed Fiction Writer
As I was hiking along the Meramec River (St. Louis, Castlewood State Park), I mulled over a sort of memoir concept that I’ve been thinking about for over a year now. The only thing stopping me is that I know I will expend lots of time, energy, hard work, getting it as perfect as I can and it will go nowhere. That is the crux of the story. As I near 60 (I’ll be 58 … Continue reading
Dry Clothes and Clean Feet – Fishing Tips
Here’s a tip or two for those of you driving on long gravel roads to clear streams, then wading for hours into the night and returning when the tempature has dropped significantly. Always have a change of clothes in your car, including dry socks and shoes. Carry an old blanket or sleeping bag in the trunk so that you can stand on it while you change. Took years of driving back in wet clothes before … Continue reading
Posted in Fish
Tagged askwritefish, fishing tips, fly fishing, fly fishing bass, fly fishing equipment, fly fishing gear, fly fishing Missouri smallmouth, fly fishing St. Louis smallmouth, largemouth bass, Missouri streams, smallmouth, smallmouth bass, St. Louis fly fishing, Where the River Splits
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The Panic and Pain of Mind-Body Dualism
In the opening scene of the classic semi-autobiographical comic novel Three Men In Boat, the writer Jerome K. Jerome is looking for a hay fever treatment when he casually begins reading about other diseases. By the time he’s finished, he concludes that he has every disease on the list. “I had walked into that reading-room a happy healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.” He goes to his doctor, an “old chum” who gives … Continue reading
Are We All Great Writers?
Warning: I’m going to act as if I were younger and full of braggadocio like most of you young writers who boast about your voice, your muse, your “work” and fearlessly market like crazy because you are full of yourselves, as I was. What a handicap age and experience is beyond the obvious! It’s a cliché of course but as we age we increasingly understand that we know very little. While young, we understand, theoretically, … Continue reading
Finding Your Fiction: Concise Steps to Writing Successful Fiction — Character
Establish Characterization Reveal Character Change character for good or bad If you become enamored with your plot twists and turns, you risk creating characters “beyond belief.” Your character can be a Terminator or a talking Sunfish and still be believable if their actions make sense. If our meek sunfish suddenly acts like a shark only to serve a plot twist, then Mr. Sunfish is no longer believable. On the other hand, if Mr. Sunfish has … Continue reading