Musings on Muses

Hah!  I finally was able to recover the password for this blog!  As you can see, I haven't been able to post here for a long time.  I ha...

Yesterday I made a final push and completed all the exercises in Don Maas' Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook.   Essentially, these are...

I went to Comicon with a friend this year, mostly attending various panels on writing.  On of the speakers was Robert Sawyer, who is one of ...

I'm making some fairly major changes to the novel, but I think the payoff is going to substantial. One of the biggest changes is that I...

I was just looking at the date of my last post here.  Has it really been almost three years?  Amazing.  This blog was tied to my old GMail a...

A bit of bad news to report. Nikolai, our beagle, died tonight. He's been having some serious pain in his back left leg for several we...

Yesterday I finished the second draft of my novel -- much rejoicing! This is the first version to be a functionally complete story, the fir...

I noticed that a few people actually check this blog periodically, so maybe there's a passing interest out there in what I'm doing. ...

I just wanted to share that tonight I reached those two magical words, "The End", in my modern fantasy novel, The Farmer Takes a L...

Recently, a writing friend of mine just had her first professional sale -- a major milestone in any writer's career. She also ran across...

In case you hadn't heard the news, the original Clarion SF Writers' Workshop will be leaving its long-time home in Michigan and movi...

It's been a productive day today. I wrote a new draft of my flash fiction story on my Neo while waiting for DMV to tell me that I don...

In looking back over this blog, I see that It's now been months since I last made an entry. That seems about proper, since for six month...

As you can see, I've been much too busy to post here lately. When I was finally completely free of NASA at the end of February, I realiz...

I have been using WriteWay Pro for a few weeks now. Let me just say, this program rocks. I was a bit skeptical that it would be useful, but ...

I've been thinking about the novel I've been working on, and I think I've finally put my finger on what's been bothering me ...

Since my computer was in the shop last week, I didn't think to check to see if the latest issue of the Journal of the Traveler's Aid...

I finally got my computer back form the repair place today. It took them five days to replace the keyboard and network card (a five minute o...

Today my daughter turned three. We've been playing this up as a big day for several weeks now -- she's a "big girl" now! W...

Things are starting to settle down a bit (though that's about to change, see below), so I'm going to try to start posting quasi-regu...

Yeah, I know I said I wasn't going to post for a while, but I thought this was worth sharing. I heard back from Cicada magazine the oth...

As you've no doubt noticed, I haven't posted to this blog in a week. I'm coming to the end of my work at NASA (I finish at the e...

One of the recurring questions almost all writers have is "How much of my writing can be based on real people?" You see, even if w...

Twice this week I've had a casual conversation with a near-stranger. As is often the case, one of the standard small talk lines is ...

I'm continuing to read The Forest for the Trees , and while it isn't breathtakingly illuminating, it is at somewhat thought-provokin...

The other day I heard about a possible challenger to the Sony Reader for the eBook platform that may finally make eBooks worthwhile. It'...

Today is my son's 17th birthday. It's a big milestone for me as a parent, even if (so far) he doesn't act as if it is one for hi...

Today was something of a major milestone for me (and my family): As of today we have paid off all of our loans, debts, etc., with the except...

This morning my Civil Air Patrol squadron had it's "subordinate unit inspection (SUI)," in which a team from the Wing's In...

[Fourth try to get Friday's post up...] One of our main tasks as writers is plump the darkest depths of the human psyche. Even if that l...

[The posts for Thursday and Friday keep vanishing from the blog. I'm not really sure why... Fortunately, I've been writing my post...

Tonight my son drove himself to work, alone, for the first time. I cannot begin to convey how terrifying a moment this is for a parent. He g...

Tonight in a fit of green-ness (and a tech junkie's curiosity), I bought one of those LED flashlights that you recharge by shaking. Now,...

The Forest For the Trees has some specific advice for the different "types" of writers that the author has encountered during her...

I've been evaluating "The Journal" for Windows ( http://www.davidrm.com/thejournal/ ), and so far I've been very impressed...

I hate spam. Don't we all? Yeah, yeah I know, but the reason I hate spam is not the reason you may think. Up until recently (more on tha...

My wife and I both have been substituting for another astronomy professor all week, so between us we've been teaching a double load. It...

We are nearing the end of the first full week of classes that I've been teaching this semester. It looks like I've got a really good...

I have begun (again, I was sidetracked by reading Talyn ) reading The Forest For the Trees , a book written by an editor at Simon and Schust...

I'm trying out something new with this entry, a piece of journaling software for Windows called (appropriately enough) "The Journal...

I finished reading Holly Lisle's Talyn a few minutes ago. It really is a great story, so my hat's off to Holly. Once it got going...

My son had his debut performance today. He has been practicing a duet with our church's choir director for a couple of months now, and ...