Below are EXCERPTs & quick links to the latest posts on writeJeremiah!
Why Harney Rode Away for His Hat…
In a previous post I stressed the importance of assigning a working title to your novel (short story, essay, screen play…) before you begin to write it. But I had nothing to say about titles themselves. A good title serves at least two functions. It specifies (or, at least, suggests) what the writing is about…
Goshen, Joseph, Rameses, Moses, Jeremiah & the Nile
Over the millennia of prehistory, the modern Nile River is at least the fifth major version of itself to have flowed from the Ethiopian highlands through North Africa and down to the Great Western Sea, more lately known as the Mediterranean. Modern satellite imagery has identified a number of dry watercourses in the sprawling desert west of today’s Nile. One of those watercourses, an “ancestral” Nile that researchers named the Eonile, flowed robustly through now barren desert several million years ago.
Continue Reading Goshen, Joseph, Rameses, Moses, Jeremiah & the Nile
Getting down Chapter 1
Writing a novel’s opening is like dropping your child off on the first day of school. Eventually, you have to wave goodbye and drive away.
The best and worst of openings…
There’s nothing more important, or difficult, than crafting a novel’s first sentence. Except perhaps for the sentence that follows. Charles Dickens, however, often made it look easy. Consider Dickens’ classic start to A Tale of Two Cities… It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,…
If stocks won’t go up, don’t buy them…
Some advice can be useless, especially when it comes to writing. Consider the following six simple “rules” for writing the perfect novel.
First things first, Part 2
In my previous post in this category, First things first, I mentioned the wisdom of choosing a working title for a project before beginning to write, best practice down to the level of producing shopping lists… Things without which I will not go home,” subtitle, “If I have any sense.” After two years of (mostly)…