Adam Phillips

I hope you've seen that a second chapter is posted.

Thanks, Breeze.

Thanks, Graeme. Now if only I can figure out how to end the dang thing. ;-)

Hey, hooking up with you is ALWAYS like a first time for me. :-P

Damn. No respect! ;-) And for what it's worth, from start to finish, Crosscurrents took TEN years. I won't do that to my readers again. Brushfire will be finished before March is out.

I know. I like San Antonio, actually. But it's not your typical American metropolitan area (actually, I wonder if there is such a thing).

Thanks, Joann. As I envisioned Jeff, I saw him as a smart guy with a kind of dark sense of humor. Fitz is more upbeat, and kind of funny in his own way.

Thanks, Lisa, you've been a faithful reader for some time now. And thanks for your words about the Reader's Choice Awards. I'm honored to be nominated.

Thanks. I hope so. I started this story years ago when I was having some trouble with my writing in Crosscurrents. It seemed like my words were coming out clunky and crappy, and an author friend of mine said, "Get away from it and write something just for fun." I started Brushfire, and the writing flowed almost effortlessly. Once I got my groove back, I put Brushfire back on hold and continued with Crosscurrents. I'm ready to finish Brushfire now. Not bragging, but I think it features some of my best narrative writing. I'm glad you liked the beginning.

Okay, Chapter 2 is back up. That'll teach me to tweak chapters via phone.

Hey guys, I made the mistake of trying to correct a mistake in chapter 2 on my smartphone since I'm away from my computer. The result was that it totally fucked up my formatting, so I had to unpublish it. I'll post it again when I get home tonight.

It's not finished at that other site. It'll get finished here.

I've just posted Chapter 2 of Brushfire. In which the plot thickens.

What I hate about this the most is that Michele was always good to me. You couldn't ask for a better wife. And she's beautiful on top of it. And little Scotty was always worth coming home to. Damn, I love that boy... Spilled milk, I guess. By late July Fitz was dropping by campus once or twice a week. I was teaching classes during summer sessions; the extra pay helped. A couple of afternoons during any given week, Fitz would stop by my office around three. Sometimes to talk about going back

Yes. Okay. That's a much more inclusive term. It takes in passive voice construction, but also speaks to the issue of bloat and waste. I'm always on the lookout for unnecessary repitition, and I have a proofreader who's an almost-editor, and she helps me grab those places. Where they happen in my writing, they're not her fault. When I started Crosscurrents, I had a serious addiction to ellipses. Nick Archer, who first invited me to post somewhere other than Nifty, cured me of that in one wicked email. But I tend to overdo semicolons. Thing is, semicolons are vastly under-used, and there's a legitimate place for them in rich, textured writing. But my fondness for them borders on addiction, and I have to be careful. I've never liked exclamation points. I use them on occasion, but that's not beeen a problem for me. I've seen others go to town with them, though. Anyway, thanks for the elaboration. I worry sometimes that this constant emphasis on cutting to the chase can really mangle an aspiring author's sense for the lyrical. Lyrical writing done really well is incredibly satisfying. An absolute delight to read; and it always entails that the reader is gonna have to slow down and luxuriate in what the writer is doing. And sometimes we don't want readers to speed-read. Sometimes we want them to linger, and we can help make that happen, all to good effect. BUT...a desire to get lyrical can easily take the writer down the fast track to ruin. My editor has always done an excellent job in trying to balance me somewhere between a sensibility that encourages readers to luxuriate in the prose and one that acknowledges the need to keep things moving. It's a medium that can be struck...but it's a hard place to attain and maintain. At least for me.

I'm all about sport. Have been all my life. And I know it's valid to say that there are things worth going to the mat for... But I think about all the Olympians for whom this was Their Shot At It. And I'm glad we didn't deny them that. Because for what? What would we have accomplished over the long haul by a boycott? I'm glad we didn't. There are more effective ways to register disapproval, I think. Nothing comes to mind, I'll admit, but when I think about the athletes who have trained and strained and dreamed, beginning long before the venue was even announced...to trashbin those dreams for the sake of taking a moral stance is a price I'm glad we didn't pay. But I'm a jock. Used to be, anyway. So I'll admit to being ridiculously biased on this one.

I shudder to say it, but the kid is seriously cute. <clamping my eyes shut hard, shaking my head, and saying to myself, "no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!!!!"> Don't get me wrong; I dont go there. No. Effing. Way. I'm just saying.

Ugh. Effin' spiders. Hate 'em. With an atavistic, irrational hate/fear. And yeah, they are a reminder to me that I'm a little girl. Here in Texas, we really only have two varieties to fear: The black widow and the brown recluse. Both toxic. The recluse, highly so. When I was a kid, a colony of black widow spiders infested our woodpile. It was stacked up against an outside wall of the house. Texas doesn't much need functioning fireplaces, but we had one, and I was supposed to keep the logs in decent order. I was re-arranging it one spring, totally oblivious until I ran into them. Talk about your adrenaline jolt; I can still feel the fear that shot through me like a lightning bolt. Wonder what it is about spiders that inspires near-universal loathing and fear? It's a reaction that happens even before your brain has a chance to think anything. There's something kind of primal about that revulsion, I think. All I know is I hate 'em. Even the non-venomous ones sorta freak me out.

My high school sophomore English teacher had this grading convention that she called The Line. She gave us a list of things she never wanted to see, and she told us that if she saw one of them, she would draw a line across the page in red pencil at the point of the infraction, stop reading, and give the paper an F. The word "very" was at the top of the list. I never forgot it.

This topic intrigues me. I want to say at the outset that I know as well as anybody that there's a difference between good writing and bad, although obviously not every piece of writing is either "good" or bad." But I think the rules invoked by various authorities and other opinion-holders amuse me a little, because I read widely and in great quantity, and what I've discovered is that there are strong writers who violate every single one of those rules without causing their work to suffer. And conversely, keeping the rules is no guarantee that your writing is going to be any good. Generally speaking, writers with a great deal of understanding and facility can get away with things that novices can't; and it always helps to know when you're going against standard "good" usage. There's no mistake that's quite as ugly in writing as the mistake the writer doesn't know he or she is making. Still, even in novices, you can run into someone who violates some of the rules--and maybe isn't even aware of it--yet still manages to write with style and strength. I think that's because there's an aspect of good writing that's difficult to pin down and teach. An author's writing can crackle with energy even when his constructions are non-standard and maybe even in violation of one or more rules. We can learn strong mechanics; we can learn general principles that characterize strong writing and weak writing; but the rule lists will never be any kind of be-all and end-all. The gifted writer won't always need to be restricted by them, novice or veteran; and they won't make an ungifted writer into a gifted one. I'm not sure I should call out people by name, but if you want a look at really, really, really, really poor technical facility, poor storytelling instincts--just poor everything--check out Mark Roeder's novels.They are workbooks, in my opinion, on what not to do. And the things he does that you shouldn't do aren't always found in the lists of rules. Then check out, oh, say, Joe Hayes. J. G. Hayes, I think he generally goes by. I'd recommend in particular his short story "Regular Flattop" from the collection This Thing Called Courage. His style is unorthodox in that one, but man, does he deliver. I'm not sure he had a list of rules at his side, though. Now, about some of the weaknesses that others of you considered: 1) Adverb phobia. I read Stephen King's On Writing a long time ago, and I think it's great. But he almost goes as far as to say that you shouldn't use adverbs at all. Right: Go read anything he's written. There's not a thing he's written that's adverb-less. And I think it was Hemingway who hated adjectives. Thing is, the English language as evolved features adverbs and adjectives. I'm thinking that means they have some use. I believe that what both of these authors are trying to drive home is that when you write, your substantives and your verbs need to be supple and muscular and energy-charged. Rather than thinking Hemingway literally wants no adjectives and King literally wants no adverbs, what they're getting at is that writers get lazy with their nouns (usually their subjects) and their verbs, and they try to make up for anemic nouns and coma-inducing verbs by overdosing on adjectives and adverbs. And I'll be the first to admit that verbs that energize narrative don't always lie at the tip of my head. So I take their points and try to make the fundamental units of my narrative sentences dynamic, but I don't worry too much, beyond a general awareness and caution, about the adverb and adjective count. 2) Cia, you mentioned passive writing. Were you referring specifically to passive voice construction in verbs? If so, yeah, I think chronic use of the passive voice can disable a writer. Still, most languages, ancient and modern, have tense, voice, and mood, and one of the voices is passive voice; I suspect it's there for something. The key to remember is that passive voice lends a feeling of passivity to the writing and can drain the energy out of verbs. Once in a while, though, that's the effect you want. 3) Dialogue sins. Their name is Legion, for they are many. Punctuation problems abound, but worse for me is the writer who runs direct, unassisted dialogue between two people for so long that you lose track of who's speaking. I like Pecman's suggestion that you give the speaker some "stage business" now and then in long dialogues. Of course, the alternative to unattributed lines of dialog is always to be adding, "he said," but that kills things quickly. Sometimes I reach for other verbs when I don't want to leave the line naked but don't want to say "he said" again. Sometimes I leave out the attribution and just have him do something that will identify who he is when he delivers a line. But I'm gonna concede that I find this challenging. Far more egregious is the dialogue that doesn't resemble real-world talk. That's when I want to punch the author in the face. Geez; talk the line out loud to yourself; is that the way you talk? Think about how you and your friends talk! That may not fully cover the waterfront, but it'll at least keep you from throwing anything down there that sounds like it was spoken by a Vulcan. 4) Characters who say "I am gay." Hmm. I guess there are infelicities of all kinds that make for less interesting reading, but I'd never have thought of that one. I can't recall coming across that before except when a character was wrestling with accepting it in himself and stared at himself in a mirror and repeated it over and over, and quite frankly, I found that scene pretty compelling! Similarly, Pecman hates it when writers begin with an alarm clock ringing. Yeah, I get it; I've read my share of bad stories that start like that, and when they're bad, the alarm-clock opener becomes a component in their badness. But I don't know that I'd want to handicap anyone from the outset by saying, "NEVER BEGIN YOUR STORY WITH THE PROTAGONIST BEING AWAKENED BY THE ALARM CLOCK." Who knows; it might work in the right hands. All this is my bloated way of saying that a writer should take the rules themselves with a grain of salt and consider why they're rules. I believe your aim should be that of avoiding the weakness created by breaking the rules rather than that of making sure you never break the rules. There's a difference. Two more things and then I'll shut up. First...if you can find an editor who edits for a living, he or she can be invaluable, and if you have a reader with a good sense for good writing, let him or her pick at your stuff if he/she has a mind to. You'll hate being schooled by both of those types, but I guarantee it'll improve your writing. I acquired a reader who edits books and screenplays for a living around the time I'd completed the third chapter of Crosscurrents. He volunteered to be my editor, and I accepted. I learned so much from him I'll always be in his debt. He made my writing so much better than it had been before. I hated him sometimes, but I wasn't stupid; I sat at his feet and let him school me. And it paid off. My astute reader, on the other hand, was a biochemist. And not particularly interested in being tactful. The most important thing he taught me was to kill your babies. If there's a segment of your writing that seems especialy precious to you, you probably need to tie it in a sack with some stones and throw it into a deep lake. It's likely to be mannered and overwrought and won't seem near as precious to your readers as it is to you. This is important to me, because I like to get a little playful with my writing. I know I'm a hack, but I like it to sing a little. And occasionally I pull it off, to my delight and to others'. But occasionally I cross the line, too. And this guy was invaluable in saying, "Dude..are you kidding me? That was dreck." There are passages in Crosscurrents that still reek of excess. I didn't kill all my babies. Some passages still make me wince; some were so egregious in their over-the-topness that I couldn't even stand to look at them, and I went in and edited them well after the fact until they didn't make me wanna puke my guts out. There are a few places still like that in CC. Some day I'll fix them, but I have other fish to fry right now. And second and finally...enjoy your writing AND pay attention to the quality, but don't get timid about potential weaknesses. You never know where it might take you. I never saw myself as a writer. I'm a math guy. I was teaching college math...but I had a story to tell. Just for me. And I thought I'd share it with some people online. My best bud had a graphic design business and saw that he might expand it by adding a word guy and marketing a turnkey product that offers the client words and images. Because I'd been writing this gay narrative thing, he invited me to come into business with him part time as that word-guy. I thought, "But I'm not a writer." He kept badgering me, though, until I said "what the hell" just to shut him up. Now I make the bulk of my living as a freelance commercial writer...and it's all because I got my feet wet by writing gay narrative. And I love my work. My point: You can make money with your writing if you hone your skills and keep an open mind about the kind of writing you're willing to do for hire. Good writing is good writing, regardless of what kind of writing it is, and the for-profit world needs it badly, and all kinds of companies forego in-house writers in favor of free-lance writers. Okay, I'm done. Sorry for the blather. I'm happy to be in this company of LGBT writers who are looking to telll stories and tell them well. We're all in-training here, we can all get better, and we can all support each other, I think. Thanks for starting this thread, Aaron.

I can't believe I'm participating in this thread. I hate not being clean. So unsexy. But you don't have to travel to the diaper aisle and buy baby wipes. These days there are wet wipes marketed under the Charmin and Cottonelle brands, intended for adults, right there in the store next to all the standard-issue toilet paper. They're awesome.

Thanks for the kid words about It Started With Brian. I hope people continue to read the story. John sort of wanted it to sink below visibility as time went by, and I understand how he wanted to protect the anonymity of Sam's survivors, but I think it's a great love story, and I'm gratified people are still reading it. I havent texted or communicated with John in a long, long time. I believe Sam's son has now graduated from high school, but I'll make a point of trying to touch base with John before long.

Thing is, I don't think trolls are interested in proving that their view is correct. That's not their motivation. Their main intent seems to be that of insulting and offending people that they view as differing from them or their opinions.

Problem is, Tumblr's like the ocean for a person who only has a little bit of time for a dip in the pool. But the vastness is so inviting, you want to keep checking out sites. Especially since any given tumblr site will invariably link to a gazillion others... There's too much there. There's even too much good porn there. And it can use up a free half hour you had in the blink of a crazed eye. I don't go there much anymore. But I do go there.

Thanks to all of of you who put my 10-years-in-the-making-but-finally-finished story up for nomination! I'm honored, and gratified to be included in the distinguished company of other nominees, and just being recognized for my efforts will keep me churning out chapters of new stuff MUCH more regularly in 2014!