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Character drives plot (the big lesson from my first novel)
My very first novel was only read by a handful of close friends. I never self-published it because it was awful. It just didn’t work. I titled it Life’s Little Jokes. I reread it more or less recently, and I realized WHY it doesn’t work. It’s a complete melodrama, but that’s not why it doesn’t […]
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On trust
I watched “The Italian Job” last night. I hadn’t watched it in about 12 years or so, and had only seen it once before. Something that struck me is a saying of the main character’s father, which she repeats: “I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust.” That’s an intriguing line. I’d […]
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On secondary characters
I’ve seen two related memes recently that stuck out in my memory. The first says something like, “I’m 35 and have yet to receive my call to adventure. I’m starting to worry that I’m not a protagonist.” The second says something like, “I never received a letter to Hogwarts at 11. I never discovered a […]
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Life imitates art
There’s an old cliche that says life imitates art. It’s been rather interesting for me over the past couple of years to see how that has occurred in my life in unexpected ways. I wrote in my previous post about starting anew after leaving religious life/ religious formation in January 2020 (just before Covid hit). […]