Morning Paper – Article © R.L. Herron
I know a lot of people are enthralled with political trash-talking (and an occasional good debate), but I’ve become bored silly by it all. I’m also worn out with all the robo-calls political PACs have paid for this year. I can’t begin to recall how many I’ve hung-up on already.
Their calls are wasted on me. I decided long ago which side was credible and which was on the side of big-money special interests. Don’t worry, I won’t go into it here. That’s not what this about.
I’m not what you would call a television person anyway, so the 24/7 political babble has given me a lot of time to write … and when I’m not writing, I read. I just finished re-reading the very interesting Stephen King book, “On Writing – A Memoir of the Craft.”
For those of you who might not have picked it up, it’s not your typical King book. It’s not about monsters and horrors and other strange things … other than the ones he writes about in his own life.
He gives a fairly straightforward accounting of his life from a young age, and how he came to the craft of writing. He also talks candidly about some of his own demons.
Then he dives into the heart of the book. How to convincingly write … anything. It’s one of the most interesting books about the craft I’ve ever read.
Reading it again (this must be the third time), I started thinking of my own reading and writing history. I don’t have the same demons, thank goodness, but we all have them in some form or another, don’t we?
Even if they’re all a little different, as King points out, it’s those universal memories we draw upon when we write.
A good writer is honest with himself first and writes to show human emotions, not just describe them. If we’re good (and sometimes very lucky), we can portray those emotions; happy times as well as the sorrow, doubt, fear and angst, well enough within our fiction to make someone else nod in comprehension.
I’d like to write like that.
As I get ready to attend the 2012 Readers Favorite Awards during the International Book Fair in Miami later this month, I’m hoping to meet some new authors who will enchant me with their abilities to write like that, too.
I’ve always been an avid reader. In my memory it seems I was about the age of the toddler above when I started, although I know well enough that memory can’t be true.
Still, I know I started early … and long before I graduated from comic books I was writing stories of my own. They weren’t particularly good; that memory is clear, unfortunately, but it seems I’ve been writing as long as I’ve been reading.
In fact, I was trying to remember when I first learned to read, when I came across the image above … and it made me smile.
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If you have a moment to spare, please check out the book trailer below for my third book, “Tinker and Other Stories.”
Then, if you have another minute, please tell me what you think of this one! It’s not what it appears to be.
Painting With Light 