Imaginary Friends

"The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied." Guess who my favorite author is. C'mon. Guess! Guess! Giveup? It's Ray Bradbury. A college professor asked us who our favorite authors were. Then he asked us why. And then he observed that writers usually prefer people who write with a similar style to their own. No, I said. I don't write like Ray Bradbury. I couldn't write like Ray Bradbury. Except now, years later, maybe I could—sort of. I don't reread books very often, but I recently read  Something Wicked This Way Comes for the third time. Ray does tend to go over the top and drown you in metaphor. I don't aspire to write exactly like him. (I prefer an area somewhere

Hi. This is part of the LDS Writer Blogfest, which means I’m going to talk about my religion again. (I’m Ben. I’m a writer. And I’m a Mormon.) But first, and since this is an LDS Writer Blogfest, let me tell you about the book I recently finished drafting. (Don’t worry. It’s not about religion, nor am I totally hijacking the fest.) The Freezer is set in a hypothetical near-future Earth that’s about to be destroyed by a collision with a rogue planet. There are sub-light-speed interstellar ships and fusion engines, but aside from that, it’s a lot like the world we live in. (Also, that about-to-be-destroyed thing tends to affect the way people think.) I wrote the final chapter the Saturday before last, mere hours before sitting down to watch the annual LDS General Conference on TV. (I missed the first few minutes because I was putting out a fire. Literally.) I joined my wife and three kids, who were already watching, right as Boyd K. Packer started to speak. I knew

Addicted: On Monday, I finished the rough draft of my current project, The Freezer . Hooray! On Tuesday, I decided to take some time off from writing, perhaps three weeks or so, but mostly some time off from getting up at five in the morning. This morning, I decided that taking time off from writing so I could sleep in was like taking time off from breathing so I wouldn't have to smell the cows across the road. When I'm not writing, I feel demotivated from doing anything. I feel blah. Directionless. Since I started writing seriously—what was it?—three years ago, every aspect of my life has grown brighter and more defined, like turning up the saturation and contrast on an old TV. I can't even begin to understand why. I feel like writing is what I do, what I must do, what I was—forgive me—born to do. I can't go back, now. I'm too addicted to whatever it does for me. But I want to give myself a little space from my manuscript before diving into revisions. I a