Some people plan to write short stories. Some people also plan out their short stories, much like they plan out a novel, thinking about characters, plot, setting, etc, before they ever put pen to paper or finger to keyboard. I am not one of those people. With only a few exceptions, my short stories have been gifts from my muse that have come almost fully formed from word-one to The End. Some novelists are similarly gifted. Alas, I am not one of them. Novels take much more advance planning and thought. The first short story I had published in a major magazine was titled A String of Pearls , and my muse woke me up one night with the story. I stayed up for several hours writing it all in longhand - have I mentioned my writing career started when dinosaurs roamed the earth? This was also when a bunch of little kids roamed my house, so it was several days before I could get back to the story and see if what I wrote in the middle of the night made any sense. It did. So I typed it and sen...

I have another book to recommend for gift-giving this holiday season; Little Journeys by Jory Sherman, a wonderful book of short stories. In the introduction Richard S. Wheeler writes, “All of these stories reach deeply into the human heart, and touch upon the great burdens that life brings to us all. These are stories of optimism, of love remembered, of the unexpected sweetness of grief, of the impulsive kindness that transformed a life and he gives us still more. Jory Sherman is quintessentially a poet, and he brings his mastery of the English tongue to each of these stories.” After that quote from the introduction, I’m hard pressed to come up with other words to better describe this collection of stories by award-winning author, Jory Sherman. He is well known for his westerns, of which he has written hundreds, but it is his lyrical prose that I enjoy most. The Ballad of Pinewood Lake, a novel that was released in 2001 was my first introduction to the more literary style of th...

When working with clients, I encourage them to read their work aloud and get a feel for the rhythm, which is an important element of style. If a sentence reads awkwardly, the writer has lost the rhythm. EXAMPLE: From Night of The Blackbird by Heather Graham : “Kelly’s Pub was already in full swing when Dan O’Hara emerged from the back room of the tavern, the guest quarters, where he’d been staying.” Done right, the rhythm of a story will ebb and flow along with the build up of the most dramatic moments - mountains and valleys. When you are going up the mountain the pace will be quicker and more concise. In the valleys you can relax and take the time to admire the scenery. In Mystic River , Dennis Lehane has a wonderful sense of that ebb and flow. In the scene I’m going to quote from, three boys have been messing around on the street, and the cops show up. When they leave, they take one boy with them: “Jimmy and Sean stepped back, and the cop hopped in his car and drove off. They watc...