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New Publication
Hi everyone! I’m pleased to announce that a nonfiction piece of mine is available in the newest issue of Arts & Letters magazine. My contribution is called “Strange Fire.” It offers a surprising answer to two questions: how do troops in combat drink water? and how much waste–of time, energy, spirit, life, and plastic–does war…
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Easiest Way to Write a Song
“The challenge of creativity is to take an old formula and deploy it in a way your audience has never seen before.” When I was a teenager, most of my favorite lyrics were evocative nonsense. If I didn’t understand it, I assumed it was profound. I also thought my favorite artists were all on drugs,…
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The Whoopie Cushion, pt. 2
The first man to sit on a whoopie cushion may have been the Roman emperor Helioflatulus. The last man to sit on a whoopie cushion was Greg Patterson, about thirty minutes ago. But the moment of rupture is brief, and the journey is so much more significant than the sitting. On a cold January day,…
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The Round-Up
Happy New Year everyone! I haven’t posted much lately, as I have been relaxing over the holiday. So here now is a brief end-of-year wrap up and a few new goals for 2024. First, if you’ve been with me for a while, you may remember this post about collecting rejections. I set a goal to…
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The Whoopie Cushion
Several weeks ago, Jamie and I visited Virginia Beach for the annual Boardwalk Art Show. After a long day of picking over the work of the artists in attendance—and almost buying a print by LJ Eidolon—we visited an arcade called Flipper McCoy’s. We easily racked up over a thousand tickets. I decided to spend 300…
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Notes from the Winners’ Circle
National Novel Writing Month is over. A month ago, I decided to attempt the standard NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words. 50,000 words is not the same thing as a novel. For perspective, Gatsby and Slaughterhouse V are both about 50k words. War and Peace is something like half a million words. What that means is,…
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Writing through Disgust
I’m in Vermont for Thanksgiving (not with my family, but with a family of a school friend). I’m still on target with my writing challenge. Over 37000 words so far in the month of November. If I can keep up the pace, I might exceed the goal of 50,000 words. I do admit that I’m…
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NaNoWriMo Progress
Hi everyone! It’s been a great week in the MFA. I workshopped a piece of mine on Wednesday, and I’m thinking it’s got real potential. It’s a short nonfiction piece I’m calling “Prolonged Exposure,” and I’m excited to keep working on it. We also had a visit from National Book Award winner Tess Gunty. She…
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6 Drafting Principles
I’ve been at Nanowrimo for one week now. I’m loving it much more than I thought I would. Here’s a link to my NaNoWriMo challenge: https://nanowrimo.org/participants/nolancapps I will tell you a secret. I love writing rough drafts. I love adding a drop to the bucket every day and watching the bucket slowly fill up. It’s…
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Well-Timed Bouts of Food Poisoning
Tomorrow is November, National Novel Writing Month. This year, for the first time, I’m doing it. I will begin work on the sequel to Mosquito Wings, which I’m tentatively calling The Minesweeper Diaries. I’m nervous to start this project. For one thing, writing a novel in one month is a feat, even if you do…
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