Celebrating Independent Authors
Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.
Dearest Digital Gawd, now available as gif, jpeg, or bit map,
Give me this day a couple uninterrupted hours,
As I swore to myself I would have this chapter done Tuesday, and now it is Thursday.
No wait, it’s Friday. How did I lose a whole day and this thing still isn’t done? Continue reading “Ed’s Casual Friday: An Indie Prayer”
I took double my medication this morning by accident. What does this mean for you? I have no idea. What I do know is that I am very, very sleepy. And a little bit too intrigued by the wall paper. God, it’s pretty. Why am I crying? I just love you all so much. You know that, right? I don’t say it enough. I’ll try and do better from now on.
What was I just doing? Oh yes, writing. About something. I need something to write about. See writing, man, it’s like words and punctuation marks. God, they’re funny. Little squiggles like tiny amoebas on my screen…why are they moving? Man, I’m thirsty.
I used to write about sports. When I was 14 or 15. I had a press pass, and I got to go to all the Chargers games. And Padres. Etc. I think I got paid $4.16 an hour. That seems right. There was a full bar in the press room. And a buffet. I availed myself of both depending on who was tending bar.
God, my neighbors are arguing. I wish they’d shut up. It’s really distracting. I wonder what they think I do all day. I never leave the apartment. Hmmm…. Continue reading “That’s the Stuff”
Reggie Ridgway always dreamed of becoming a writer. An avid reader from an early age, he found a wonderful escape in stories. He did not start out in life as a writer, After graduating high school, Vietnam happened and after 7 years as a medic in the Air Force, he went on to study medicine. Then life happened, a wife and two children kept his dream of becoming a Doctor on the back burner. He did manage to get a BA in computer science while holding down a day job as an x-ray tech in Southern California. He taught math and computer programming in a local junior college. Writing a novel was still something he always wanted to do and after some encouragement from his creative writing professor, he began to write. His first novel is out on Amazon and his second novel is being shopped around for representation. He is inspired by Peter Clement and Michael Palmer who write medical thrillers, and likes to infuse his experience working with computers and in the medical field into his own blend of high tech drama. He lives with his wife in a house which looks out on Lake Isabella, in Southern California, where he derives much peace and inspiration.
His current title is In the Midnight Hour:
Doctor Jonathan Anderson is having the worst day of his life.
Forced to resign from his prestigious position as chief of surgery, he goes home to find his wife in bed with another man. On the brink of suicide, his wife tries to wrestle the gun from him and is accidentally killed. Convicted for her murder, he finds himself in prison, but after managing to escape, he ends up in the same hospital he ran, this time as a patient.
Hell-bent, Anderson seeks revenge on those responsible for ruining his life. Things are not as they should be, and a series of murders ups the stakes, but despite the work of two committed hospital employees and the investigating detective, the identity of the murderer and the motive for the heinous crimes may come too late to save any of them.
“A fast paced thriller with good story points and characters which are believable and worth reading about.” Author Scott Nicholson says. “You won’t want to go to the hospital again after reading In the Midnight Hour.”
This book is available from Amazon. You can find Reggie on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and learn more about him and his writing from his blog.
[This article is part of a series by author Lin Robinson on the subject of so-called “rules” of writing. You can find the other articles here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.]
In this series I have mostly dealt with negative “rules” — adjurations to avoid the use of various parts of English speech that are perfectly useful.
In this final article I’d like to switch to debunking several “positive” kinds of “rules”: concepts which are urged, even pressed onto writers as necessary, but which I’d suggest you drop not just from you tool kit, but from your vocabulary.
The Myth Of “The Protagonist” — One of the most repeated and most utterly useless concepts for writers is “protagonist”. It’s a word that does absolutely nothing for you, and can mess you up. Perhaps you’ve seen newbies wailing, “Can I have more than one protagonist?” (And in screenplay circles, sometimes get answers like “OK, if it’s a ‘buddy movie'”, or “OK if it’s an ‘ensemble’ movie”, otherwise no. How about love stories. Do you really have to make one of the pair the main show and the other one subsidiary? How about a story of two rivals? But they’ll tell you that you have to because that’s the way it is and who are you to argue with Aristotle? Continue reading “Breaking the “Rules” Part 5 by Lin Robinson“
