This is a poem that took a lot of research to compose, and a lot of care to thread.

It is a cento (a poem comprised entirely of lines from others' work, a pastiche) in which all of the borrowed lines are the first lines of a Stephen King short story, novella or novel. I collected a great many first lines (not every possible one, but close) and then ( Read more... )

As you know, I'm in the midst of preparing all new work for an all-haiku feature next week at First Draft. Among other things, I have written a cycle of haikus entitled:

THE UNDER THE DOME CYCLE:
A series of haikus about carrying around Stephen King’s latest bestseller in public.

It's two pages worth of haikus, son.

I've read to page 100. I'd have read more, of course, but I got a couple of other things going down right now. A lot of internal monologue to date, but that's typical ( Read more... )

I had a great first day: two days worth of words in one. They say go big early so it's not as hard later on when it gets rough, and they're right. I feel like a king now.

(Please remember this in a week or so when I'm feeling like a serf being dragged through the village square by the king's men for not paying taxes.)

I have to clarify something. ( Read more... )

In Stephen King's On Writing, the master storyteller recommends a six-week no-look period after having written a first draft of a novel; that you should give yourself time to get cold on the document and re-approach it with new eyes.  "It's always easier," he writes "to kill someone else's darlings than it is to kill your own."

It is four weeks to ( Read more... )