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Showing posts from August, 2011

The Worth of a Word

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I'm a writer. My medium is words. But I've had other artistic interests, namely photography. To excel at either takes so much practice I had to pick one, and writing won. But in this, my hundredth blog post, I'm going back to photography. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, right? I now give you a three thousand word story about myself: Get it? Probably not. Don't even try. Because when it really comes down to it, there's a reason books are full of words. Words can convey more information, emotion, sensation, and meaning simultaneously than any other single medium. A picture might be worth a thousand words of visual description, but it has no other senses. Looking at those photos, you might feel the breeze at your back on a mountain top, but will you hear the eagles just out of the frame? You won't smell the liquid pouring from the bottle and know what it is. You won't feel what I felt or have any idea what would make an environmentally-

Ten Years

Sunday marked our tenth wedding anniversary. What can I say about that? My siblings and their spouses were all impressed that we'd been married for so long. Only my oldest sister has been married longer. (I'm the third of seven children.) My younger brother got married earlier in the year. He and his wife are about ten years younger than us. They're so young. What does that make me? Wise, I'm sure. It's funny, but Ammii and I went to the same high school and never met. I was a senior when she was a sophomore. I was in band, and spent a lot of time hanging around the band room. She was in orchestra and spent a lot of time right next door in the orchestra room. I think I remember seeing her in the halls or at her locker, but I never knew her name, never said a word that I recall. For her part, Ammii remembers being annoyed by a group of saxophonists practicing Sabre Dance in the hall before school. Like we thought we were so cool. I was part of that group. Sh

I call it "The Unlimiter"

I'm still alive and have returned from an epic two-week road trip with my family. I have also replaced the starter in my other car, but I only mention that because I'm so proud I actually did it. So, I'm starting work on a new novel. Except that it's not really new. I've gone back to the original concept for my second novel (called at various times Charism , The Qualia of Magic , The Sense , and In Memory ) and am working on constructing a new story around the same characters and premise. This stirs up a lot of mixed feelings for me. Mostly, what makes me think I can pull something better from my original idea? I know what to ask. I know whose story it is. I got the other story I wanted to tell out of my system in a different novel, Drivers . And now everyone has clear and compelling motivations. Let's see if I can sum them up: Brian makes superheroes. Occasionally a supervillain. He removes the natural limits from the talents that people already have.