Michael Brown's Blog – June 2010 Archive (9)

Search Blog Posts

Diversity

If you want to write well on diverse topics, there are a few things to remember. First, we must pretend there is real purpose to all the things we find ourselves doing; otherwise, we are just spinning our wheels. Second, anything that requires power usually does not come supplied with batteries, and the model must change constantly. Third, it seems we will never be able, physically, to visit the past and return, but we might be able to travel into the future and stay there. If you are a story… Continue

Added by Michael Brown on June 29, 2010 at 12:00am — 11 Comments

As I Was Walking to St. Ives...

Last night I met myself on the way home, and being startled initially, I forgot for a moment which of us was headed in the right direction. I looked much older than my morning’s reflection, and so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to find out some of what was in store for my younger striving self to face. Imagine the big letdown when I told me, “I’m sorry; outlining one’s future disappointments and achievements is strictly forbidden by the rules of time, but here’s a hint. Take a look at… Continue

Added by Michael Brown on June 26, 2010 at 6:49pm — 12 Comments

As Night and Day

Laurie had been clean for six months when she decided she would try to find the woman she knew as Mama, for although she had recurring dreams of Tess waking in madness, imagining she was trapped in a painting, in her gut, Laurie believed somehow, somewhere Tess still managed to survive, living off the kindness of strangers.… Continue

Added by Michael Brown on June 22, 2010 at 9:00am — 7 Comments

Three Writing Friends Revisited

When Jack got out of prison, he carried with him the manuscripts of three very publishable crime novels filled with dark passion about living the life, steamy sex scenes, heists gone wrong, and unsentimental vengeance, and the hook was the three formed a trilogy if one connected the random clues interspersed throughout.

After a few years of writing assignments handed out with the highest of expectations to group after group of disinterested students, Shawna, with visions of being the next… Continue

Added by Michael Brown on June 21, 2010 at 9:00am — 5 Comments

Help Me With This One?

So I’m with this friend who tells me he can’t go check out a movie this afternoon because he’s got to go have a meal with his family to celebrate Father’s Day, and I realize I never spent one with my father, not one. Well, his name was Ernest, and he died when I was twelve, see, and before that he’d been separated from my mom for ten years. I saw him whenever I stayed with my grandmother in her Coney Island bungalow, but I don’t remember anyone marking his special day in June; his birthday was… Continue

Added by Michael Brown on June 20, 2010 at 1:18pm — 13 Comments

52 Pick-Up

“She used the whole damn thing, every last bit of it,” Matt said, “including the Suicide Kings and the Bedknob Queen, even laying out the possibilities of putting it into four sections of thirteen chapters each. It was exactly where I was going with my second collection. I feel so cheated. Of course, she’s from England, a brilliant writer, and I just have to admit she got there first, but I spent all that time… Continue

Added by Michael Brown on June 18, 2010 at 11:30pm — 11 Comments

Pick-Me-Up



Any of the best who deign to give advice tell you to start just before the crisis, and when you only have a brief space to relate your tragedy, that probably is the best place to begin. As solidly hard-boiled as the world seemed at the top, there was only one moment of consciousness of what had occurred after landing, the unbearable pain blotting out all else in the scrambled situation that obtained. If I spoke German, in the hospital I’d…

Continue

Added by Michael Brown on June 16, 2010 at 8:30pm — 10 Comments

Short answer...

…because his attitude clipped me for years and it just got to be too much. Nothing I did was ever good enough to measure up. He called it quits one too many times. I tried sweetness, and supplication, and stubbornly remaining silent, then finally, going ballistic. That way worked, for me, and I sort of enjoyed that last look of desperation in his eyes. I know you hate me too now, but you asked me why, and I’m… Continue

Added by Michael Brown on June 14, 2010 at 2:30am — 8 Comments

I Know Why You Write

Maybe it’s just me because you tell me things that remind me of lines I’ve read in greeting cards, and there isn’t much in those couplets that I can use. You offer advice in homilies you must have heard as a child and misinterpreted because your incomplete sentences are brimming with mismatched simple words that are rarely collocated by logical thinking speakers. I must intimidate because you sometimes take agonizing minutes to phrase your language oh so… Continue

Added by Michael Brown on June 10, 2010 at 1:09am — 18 Comments

Latest Blog Posts

Most Popular Blog Posts

Blog Topics by Tags

Monthly Archives

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

© 2013   Created by Robert McEvily.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service