I’ve spent my entire life astounded by the magic of music, appreciating everything from opera and Gregorian chant to bluegrass and every kind of jazz there is. But what exactly is being touched in us and inspired when we listen to our favorite songs? What is this creation of new…

Better than a Black Belt? — I like the belt methodology in martial arts. It’s how practitioners and teachers distinguish levels of skill, but it’s also a way for them to understand the value of hard work, serious committment, and struggle. Should there be color-coded levels for writers? That would in some ways be an interesting…

With baseball’s spring training kicking into gear, I am drawn back to my roots. I spent the best 15 years of my life coaching city rec league baseball teams that my three sons played on. All three eventually became high school stars (definitely not their dad’s story). My middle son…

Overcoming a major fallacy of old-school writing etiquette — It is definitely not true that our words live forever on the internet. I wrote for a number of wonderful online publications years back that either went belly-up or revised my essays and stories off their websites over time. Some of my best writing has evaporated forever — at least…

Sometimes the secret is not exactly what they say it is — I’ve been working on Chapter 12 of my next novel for a few days now. A bit more than a thousand words in, I wrote this sentence: “He was going to need to figure out how to deal with whatever Arthur Gold had planned, but it wouldn’t do to show…

Maybe not what you think you want to read, but still… — The story for most everybody interested in “becoming a writer” is at times poignant, sad, tragic, funny, improbable, enlightening, surprising, and/or (hopefully) inspiring. I’m not exactly going to tell that story here. But I am going to let you in on a secret that isn’t really a secret: You aren’t…

Major Discoveries During My Time on Planet Covid Crazy — I discovered three excellent resources while stuck here on Planet Covid Crazy. One is by a famous writer. One is by an experienced journalist who is also a writing instructor and editor. The last was published a decade ago by a genius non-fiction author with a weird name I had…

Don’t tell a character in your head to get lost — One morning nearly ten years ago, I was walking upstairs to my 3rd floor study when a voice showed up in my head offering the beginning line of a story. By the time I sat in front of my laptop, the voice made it clear that I needed to get…

Mindfulness and the sound of writing in your head. — What is it they say about meditation and the search for Enlightenment? “The Master shall appear when you are ready.” But what if the Master never shows up? Does that mean you still aren’t ready? That you may never be worthy? Maybe the Master knows you’re operating on a different…