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A blog written for writers by a writer—twice published.
A Nod To Derry’s Son
Derry, New Hampshire was the longtime home of Robert Frost. This poem is in dedication to my favorite poetry book: North of Boston, and his poem October.
On Writing: Stopping and Noticing
Trust me…, stopping and noticing the details around you is life’s most generative experience, not only will your writing improve, but so will your mental health.
I’m Published in The Closed Eye Open
Hi, friends and readers, subscribers and first-time-site clickers. I have big, beautiful news to share with you. I published in
Revision, Start Learning to Love It
Anyone can write. Few revise well.
Writing
I’m starting 2022 intending to grow. Help me grow as an artist and influencer and follow.
Escape Second Death
“Worms tunnel the clay and mud and brains and veins of Man’s forgotten pains.”
Forlorn Light: Virginia Woolf Found Poems, by Nazifa Islam
Several poems left me exposed and shivering, as if I were in front of a mirror which revealed what’s inside the reader. The images I discovered moved me to tears. And, the more I studied, the more I understood myself.
The Day god Died: Chapters I & II
“…I hated him and his kind. I hated his affluence, his expensive clothes, his chiseled looks, and the arrogance he was born too. But most of all, I hated the power he held over me, his assumption of authority, and the truth of his superiority.”
To Live Is To Never Aim For Gentle Death
The purpose of life is not to arrive safely into old-age, but to live presently.
Portrayals of Commodus, From the Senate Floor to Hollywood
“Commodus is often portrayed as an inept, spoilt, cowardly, and mentally ill man. None of these are true.”
A Life Lived for Art Is Never A Life Wasted
To write well, you have to write what-you-know, and your knowledge about what motivates, scares, angers, and affirms the individual person are the brushes you will use to paint page after page.
My Writing: A Historical Fiction Sample
“You won’t need the Gods or anyone else once we’re done. You will have servants to wait on your wives, horses for your sons, and hunger only a bad dream.”
Big Moments Count
“it felt like those moments in life where we sense magic; those days where every bone in your body feels good, and there is laughter and love overflowing, and you know how great that feels. I feel that.”
Worlds Apart, by W. Alexander
A Short Story “…I don’t consider your happiness when I call. You are needed, and you are able, therefore you must go.”
A Rambling Treatise on The Craft
Nothing arouses me more than when a reader, as if hoodwinked by a magician, thinks I have talent.
Paradise and Achievement: A Week in Acadia
I climbed summits and traversed ocean waters.
N.L. Blandford: On Writing
“People can shy away from topics because they are hard, and it can be easier to call them dark, rather than truth, or an aspect thereof. I believe that it is in the dark that we can really start to understand the true nature of our world and its people.” —N.L. Blandford
I am Published!
I am excited to finally be able to answer the dreaded question, “Are you actually published?” with a, “Yes!”
Masters of The Craft: Stephen Crane, The Herald of Naturalism
All great writers master the craft, but Crane—like Whitman, like Dickinson, like Hemingway, like Hugo, like Pope, like Voltaire, like Homer, like Kafka, like Woolf—had a touch of the divine; that unteachable it factor, and it is among the company of these writers where he lives forever in the pantheon of literary immortality.
Miniver Cheevy, by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking.
Crosses & Scribbles: Writing As Christian
“If I was to write a Christian novel, I would have to write, like all writers do, a human canvas navigating and experiencing life as it is lived; I would have to write the truth”
Book Review: The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
“Throughout these pages, the reader finds the brushwork of the master, and like all great artists, James can not only paint a story by the prowess of his craft, but, simultaneously, he hangs a mirror of enigmas and human complexity. Every reader can relate to the figurative handcuff’s persons’ finds themselves confined to.” —W. Alexander
The Miraculous Rise of Phillis Wheatley
Wheatley achieved the miraculous, the impossible, the unthought of: she a black-African-born-woman did not peel at the edges of prejudice, she slashed it, and all were forced to recognize her gift and confront their misplaced assumptions on the place of women and slavery.
A New Novella
“So, dearest followers, buckle up and enjoy the ride; I will be showing you an inside look of the writing process; you get to join me on an ambitious but fulfilling project.”
My wife featured in SKATING Magazine
Most of you don’t know that I married a celebrity (Olympian and professional ice-dancer) and that we, now, abode in picturesque New Hampshire. Recently, she interviewed for SKATING Magazine. I will brag on my wife every chance I get.
Book Review: On Writing, by Stephen King
“What I took from this book? Stephen King is not superman, and neither does the aspiring writer need to be. King makes it clear, writers are made in the trenches, and those who put their nose to the grindstone, and never let anything stop their writing, succeed.”
The Choice to Write: A Reflection, Part 1
I don’t do it for approval, I do it because it is the most natural thing in the world to me.
Book Review: The Midnight Library
Few books can change you, teach you, and inspire you at the same time, but Haig’s The Midnight Library is one of those books.
Spring Break, shew!
There is something motivating in knowing that my children will learn to read on a book I made just for them.
I Write The Words I Cannot Pray: A Poem
I write the words I cannot pray, too false for Heaven, too honest for Hell, telling the truth by lying well.
Book Review: The Light Between Oceans
This story had me drinking to through it, as it twisted and ripped at my heart, for I could not put it down.
Book Review: The Song of Achilles
I loved the story; I am a huge history nerd, and I love her ability to retell classic literature through the modern medium of prose.
The Four Elements of Storytelling
How well a writer weaves all four together, is the difference between a great and terrible book.
Writing
Beat the Boy; Destroy the Man
W. Alexander Dunford I will never forget the television’s blue light that night fifteen years ago. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Blood Diamond
Writing
The Day God Died: Chapters 1 &2
“…in that moment my fear retreated. I discovered I hated him and his kind. I hated his affluence, his expensive clothes, his chiseled looks, and the arrogance he was born to. But most of all, I hated the power he held over me, his assumption of authority, and the truth of his superiority.”