
Budding Writer, 1979: Musical notes
Reading Time: 2 minutes I wanted to write a story that would be paced with the playing time of a piece of music. After all, song writers do it all the time. Continue reading Budding Writer, 1979: Musical notes
Howard Fielding’s original short stories, longer works in serial form, parables and other stories that want to be told.
Reading Time: 2 minutes I wanted to write a story that would be paced with the playing time of a piece of music. After all, song writers do it all the time. Continue reading Budding Writer, 1979: Musical notes
Reading Time: 2 minutes Sometimes the hats of journalist and fiction writer can overlap. Covering a local disaster led to ideas for a short story. Continue reading Journeyman Journalist, 1979: Bridging the gap
Reading Time: 2 minutes It took much longer to develop a news sense than to come up with ideas for make-believe stories that died on the vine. Continue reading Journeyman Journalist, 1979: Turning back
Reading Time: 2 minutes “And the days grow short
When you reach September”…
The story behind “September Song” Continue reading The surprising story of “September Song”
Reading Time: 2 minutes I got the idea for this title character for a short story — or series of stories, or a novel — at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant on Queen Street in Southington, Connecticut. Continue reading Budding Writer, 1979: ‘The Heavenly Hash Slinger’
Reading Time: 3 minutes Of the four ideas I started the week with, this was the only one that I actually completed. I don’t know if I ever opened it again. Continue reading Budding Writer, 1979: ‘Parameters of Pygmalion’
Reading Time: 2 minutes If nothing else, a week on the beach showed me the value of long blocks of time to think and write. Continue reading Budding Writer, 1979: Putting down tentative roots
Reading Time: 2 minutes “Items in Stock” was, in truth, a misnomer. Some were complete, or ready for a final draft or a rewrite. Others were ideas or characters in search of a plot. Continue reading Budding Writer, 1979: Top-of-the-head inventory
Reading Time: < 1 minute The best part was seeing my first two freelance articles — one fiction, one nonfiction — in print. Tear sheets can be a gift. Continue reading Budding Writer, 1979: Best birthday ever!
Reading Time: 2 minutes If I had treated my first year as a freelance writer like a real business, I would have seen that the end of the first quarter was approaching a crisis. Continue reading Budding Writer, 1979: Another diversion