“Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility” I take this blog seriously. I know I have come to use humor more frequently as the blog goes on. However I believe that is an indication of growing confidence in the blog itself. The humor, mostly self-deprecating, …
“Just as a piece of land has to be prepared beforehand if it is to nourish the seed, so the mind of the pupil has to be prepared…” I was on my front porch drinking coffee, vibing to the start of the weekend and reading “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg when I came …
A look back on the one year anniversary of this post It is school day morning and my teenage son just asked if he could stay home today because he couldn’t get to sleep last night. He was asleep at dinner time and I tried to wake him up. I had made a good …
A troubling thing has been happening since I published Tripio. I have been getting asked quite a bit the question: “What is a tripio?” This question was first asked me at a class on memoir writing at the Indiana Writers Center. No one in the class with me knew what a tripio was. It hadn’t …
Going home again to find the want ad Was it Thomas Wolfe who said you can’t go home again? Not sure why he said it. For me it was easy to jump in my car and drove two hours east to my birthplace of Dayton, Ohio. I wasn’t trying to prove him wrong or …
Yesterday morning at this time my backside was here. I was revising, rewriting, reworking -you name it- my second novel, “Back outta the World”. This morning, I am using that very same backside to sit in the same chair and use the same keyboard. However that exact backside now proudly supports a novelist. Since you …
Whitman. Twain. Melville. VanSchaik. (I’m the tan one) Yes, that is a list of a few of America’s greatest writers. But it means something else to me. You see, every summer for the past five years, I’ve managed to take a short mid year holiday at a rental house on the Ohio River. I discovered …
There it sits a few feet away. In book form. My book. The novel I wrote. What to do with it? The box actually arrived three days ago. I knew what was in the box and opened it with a kitchen knife. Tripio was bigger and thicker than I thought and expected. It didn’t “feel” …
May 2, 2017., 8:36 AM: “Just finished meditation preceded by candle exercise and yoga. In the meditation I found the name of my novel- ‘Chicago Days’ is Tripio!” The above entry is from a more recent SotM (Sketchbook of the Mind) and captures my process, my technique, my style and my approach to writing perfectly. …
A troubling thing has been happening on this journey to publish Tripio. I have been getting asked quite a bit: “What is a tripio?” This was first brought to my attention at a class on memoir writing at the Indiana Writers Center. No one in the class with me knew what a tripio was. It …
Coffee Novelist 
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