One of the most fascinating parts of Sebastian Junger’s fantastic book Tribeis when he describes how American Indian societies used rituals to help warriors deal with their traumatic wartime experiences. For me, these ceremonies hold the key to finding homecoming and belonging.
Today I have some exciting news to share. As of a few days ago, I am roughly halfway done with Act III! Despite this milestone, I still have several weeks of work ahead of me before I’ll have a finished manuscript. In this update, I want to share what I have left to do, and how you can read my
It’s easy to look at the celebrations at the end of stories and think they only exist to please the audience, but I’ve come to realize that these ceremonies serve a much deeper, and more important role in stories and our lives.
After a couple of months off from writing, I'm happy to report that in early June, I resumed work on the book and that I’ve already made a substantial amount of progress
Just the other week I wrapped up coaching Ultimate Frisbee at a Beaver Country Day School. Coaching there is not only a lot of fun but is also deeply meaningful and plays a significant role in my book.
In my last post, I talked about selecting a Batman movie, The Dark Knight, as the masterwork for my autobiographical novel, Waking From Innocent Dreams. In this post, I will share a few ways that I incorporated this movie and the character of Batman into my book.
I was only 16 when I met my birth family and didn’t yet understand the long-lasting impact that event would have on my life. So, as I look back at the past 20 years or so, I think about what advice I might give my younger self.
When my editor first suggested using a Batman film as my masterwork, I was intrigued but unsure how I could incorporate it into my work. After all, what does the caped crusader have in common with a journey about getting to know my biological family?
In the summer of 2019, when I started working with my editor, Rachelle Ramirez, one of our goals was to find a well-established novel, film, or any other story that I could use as a template to help ground my story.
Welcome to the first post in a series I’m calling "Beyond the Book," where I will give you a peak behind the curtain and provide you a window into my thought process of writing my autobiographical novel, Waking From Innocent Dreams.
As some of you may, or may not know, every spring I coach Ultimate Frisbee. While this activity is one of the highlights of the year, my duties as a coach often make it quite challenging to make progress on the book, so I’m taking a break.
Are you interested in getting your hands on my book before everyone else? In today’s mid-month update, I will tell you how and talk about something not directly related to my book, my new website.
This month I’m going to be sharing several smaller updates on a variety of topics related to the book.
I'm afraid this update is going to be much shorter than usual. I had intended to write more, but I've been so focused on completing Act 2B that I haven't had the time or headspace to do so.
2020 has been something else. Despite all its challenges and upsetting news, this year turned out to be perfectly suited for getting some serious writing done. Overall, I made a lot of progress on the book, and for the first time since I started this project, I feel like a novelist.
November has been a bit of a strange month for me. Between the US presidential election and wrestling with burn out it I’ve felt a little off my game. However, I still managed to get some great work done two import sections, the “Ordeal” and “Bad Guys Close In.”
The writing over the past month has been going incredibly well. I’m roughly halfway through rewriting the 12 chapters that makeup Act 2B and should be able to finish the rest in the next couple of weeks.
Over the past month, I’ve continued to work through the 12 chapters that make up Act 2A. After rewriting Chapter 22, and adding a few more scenes, I was able to finish this section and send it off to some early readers.
Over the past month I both had a breakthrough with the writing and hit a creative wall. I also had to make some difficult decisions on what to cut from the book.
It’s time again for another Waking From Innocent Dreams author update. In my last email, I wrote about some of the encouraging feedback I received from early readers who reviewed the first 12 chapters of my book. If you missed that update, you can find it in the newsletter archives on my website.
