Monthly Archives: June 2007

A laptop, a fishing pole and a lakeside view

The great thing about writing for a living is that you don’t necessarily have to be in an office to get your work done. If you own a laptop, you can go just about anywhere. So quick, while summer is here to enjoy, take advantage of the great weather. Go somewhere gorgeous, somewhere with wild …

June 19, 2007 – 8:35 PM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Trekking for humor

Humor can lend warmth to a story, a sense of family, and a lot of entertainment value. The trouble is, the reader (or viewer) really has to know the characters well enough to appreciate humor, or it falls flat and runs the risk of alienating the audience from those characters. Take Star Trek: The Next …

June 19, 2007 – 8:25 PM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Long endings aren’t always good endings

It doesn’t require Dr. Larry Shapiro to figure out why sometimes the hardest thing can be to figure out an ending to a good story: it is hard, and even the best fall victim. Remember the Lord of the Rings trilogy movie and the “17 endings” that so many people complained about? Hey, even the …

June 13, 2007 – 10:26 PM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

When in doubt, kill someone!

One of the best cures for writer’s block, other than leaving writing and going into selling truck accessories, is to kill someone off. No, I don’t mean become a murderer in real life. I mean in your story, genius. This simple advice goes back at least to Lawrence Block. And he’s right. Think about it. …

June 13, 2007 – 10:19 PM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Distractions

The biggest barrier to completing projects in writing is focus. In today’s high-tech world, there are plenty of more-entertaining and more-pleasant ways to spend time. Whether its burning and listening to your music on an iPod, Web surfing, TV, videogames, fishing, hitting the greens with your Ping Golf equipment or even just spending time with …

June 13, 2007 – 10:14 PM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (1)

It’s real simple … simply work

You know, everyone thinks they have at least one book in them. The only reason we don’t see most of them is that they never get written. It’s easy to say you’re a writer, or that you want to be, but if you don’t write every single day, if you’re not producing, it’s all a …

June 13, 2007 – 10:08 PM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Writing under deadline

Writing content under deadline is one of the biggest challenges a writer can face. It’s also one of the most important for working writers. John Irving, for example, can write beautiful prose, wonderful novels that sing of a mastery of the English language. But he completes perhaps one novel every three to seven years; he’d …

June 3, 2007 – 7:16 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (0)