J. Timothy King
Revising Your Novel
As a writer, I often get asked, how do you revise a novel? Actually, I don’t get asked that. Someone does often ask me what word he wanted to use, as though I as a writer should have a command of words. (I don’t. But that’s a different post.) Of course, if I knew what […]
You Too Could Save $00** Using a Service You Already Have!
We got a wonderfully funny letter from Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts today, partially reproduced here (click to enlarge): The letter goes on to explain that certain of our prescriptions, we could get them home delivered for $00 less than what we pay to pick them up! How cool is that! The flip-side lists the […]
Revising “From the Ashes of Courage”
Revising a novel can be an exciting and trying process. Exciting, because you get to see a story you’ve been working on for weeks (or longer) finally taking final form. Revision is also when you finalize the themes in your story, because the characters’ story arcs have reached their final form, and you get to […]
“Dirty†Really Is Dirtier
A fun article I ran across while catching up on my reading today. Mentioned in ADVANCE for Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists (a health-industry trade website I’ve been reading in order to understand one of my fictional characters): a soon-to-be published study indicates that the smell of a clean room makes people behave better.
Word Counts and Words That Count
Between 11:59 PM tonight and 12:00 AM tomorrow morning, I write 1,182 words, simply by switching from the NaNoWriMo word-count tool to the one built into my word processor. I have 7 more scenes to write to complete From the Ashes of Courage, and most of those are epilogue. Today, I penned over 4,000 words, […]
The Lazy Man’s Chocolate Pie
This year, we’re making pies for our family Thanksgiving feast. All of my brothers and their families all gather at my parents for the day. C is making pumpkin and lemon meringue. But my favorite, I think, is still my own Lazy Man’s Chocolate Pie. Hardly original, but still full of sugar and calories, and […]
Parents of Divorced Couples
I ran into an interesting issue today with one of the characters of From the Ashes of Courage. In brief, Gail and George divorced years ago, and they haven’t seen each other since. Now, she’s part of his life again, as a friend. George’s father seems genuinely happy to see her and treats her with […]
She’s a headstrong businesswoman…
She’s a headstrong, driven, single-minded businesswoman, a successful independent professional at only 29 years old. But she still feels empty. He’s a fun-loving real-estate agent who made a mint in the boom market, now fast running out of money. And their friends set them up on a blind date, unaware that many years ago, they […]
7 Fun Links from My Feed Reader
I’ve been slogging my way through NaNoWriMo. I’ll probably call this novel From the Ashes of Courage (or some variation thereof), because I think it reflects the theme and mood of the story: risking all in the face of defeat; and less Love Boat, more As Good As It Gets. At this point, when it […]
How to Grow Flowers
The Little One was commissioned by one of her friends to draw pictures for a book about how to grow flowers. My first question was, of course, “How can you draw pictures for a book that hasn’t been written yet?” That was the Little One’s question, too. But she drew the pictures, and explained each […]