Showing posts with label Stephen King. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen King. Show all posts
Monday, January 08, 2024

Is Your Protagonist "Different"?

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 By Thomas Kies I recently finished two books back-to-back that I enjoyed but for completely different reasons.  The Maid by Nita Prose and...
Monday, February 20, 2023

First Piece Published--Feeling Remembered.

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 by Thomas Kies As I was walking Annie, our dog, one morning, I thought about the first piece of fiction that I was lucky enough to have pub...
Monday, January 23, 2023

Twilight Zone and Writing Truths

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By Thomas Kies Anne Serling, daughter of Rod Serling, posted a letter her father wrote to a high school student back in 1961,   It read: ...
Monday, October 31, 2022

What Scares Us?

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 by Thomas Kies Happy Halloween readers!!  Since today is the day when, according to the ancient Celtic tradition of Samhain, we should be l...
1 comment:
Thursday, June 30, 2022

More danger

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I’m officially a Midwesterner, moved in and (somewhat) unpacked in Orchard Lake, Michigan. I’ve dragged my writing chair to the corner of an...
1 comment:
Thursday, April 21, 2022

Getting out of the way

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“Sometimes the story knows what it’s trying to say, and your job is to let the story speak.” I said this to a student this morning. He had t...
Monday, November 15, 2021

My Process

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 By Thomas Kies I’m going to riff off of Donis Casey’s excellent blog this week about her writing process.   Mine is best described as chaot...
3 comments:
Monday, November 01, 2021

Tidbits From the News

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by Thomas Kies  I worked for newspapers and magazines for over thirty years so I’m a news junkie, pure and simple.  A few stories jumped out...
Monday, October 04, 2021

October: Time for Scary Stuff

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We’ve just flipped the page on the calendar to October.  Definitely one of my favorite months, it’s the time when the air turns cool and cri...
1 comment:
Thursday, August 26, 2021

Sentences: The Intersection Between Reading and Writing

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This summer, I read a handful of books I enjoyed, books that landed in various ways for me. When I read, I’m highly aware of authors’ prose ...
Monday, June 28, 2021

What Makes It Worthwhile

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 Today I received the first half of my advance for WHISPER ROOM to be published in 2022.  My wife watched as I opened the envelope from my a...
2 comments:
Thursday, February 11, 2021

Thou Shalt Dwell

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I enjoyed reading Thomas Kies’s post Thou Shalt Hoard Notebooks , partly because I love Stephen King (I’m a Mainer, after all), and partly b...
Monday, February 08, 2021

Thou Shalt Hoard Notebooks

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 By Thomas Kies Starting today, I’ll be teaching my Creative Writing Class again for the next six weeks.  I always start the first class wit...
3 comments:
Monday, June 29, 2020

Creative Writing 101

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A week ago, I started teaching Creative Writing again at our community college.  We’re all wearing face masks, are seated at least six feet ...
1 comment:
Monday, November 04, 2019

Writers who inspired me to be a writer

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As I write this, I’m on the 11th floor of the Hyatt Regency in Dallas attending Bouchercon. Last night, I had cocktails with Michael Barson ...
2 comments:
Monday, July 01, 2019

More on Plotters versus Pantsers

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I thoroughly enjoyed Warren Easley’s guest blog about outliners versus pantsers. Full disclosure, my wife and I had dinner with Warren and...
1 comment:
Thursday, April 25, 2019

Plot Points

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Two weeks ago, I wrote about the benefits of outlining a novel before you begin writing. I’m still plugging away at it, and, having moved sc...
2 comments:
Thursday, October 25, 2018

Thoughts on a Reading Life

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Like all writers, I’m a reader first. But my day job has me thinking about books, maybe, differently than some other writers might. Given th...
4 comments:
Thursday, June 07, 2018

The art of the summary

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Can you summarize your novel in two or three sentences? This is a litmus test many of us use. It’s helpful, and when I can’t do it, I know I...
1 comment:
Thursday, March 01, 2018

How long is too long?

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I wrote my first novel in about 15 months. It wasn’t very good. I rewrote it several times, and despite all that CPR, it still wasn’t very g...
2 comments: