Let me make one thing clear from the start: you’ve got it wrong. Your parents also had it wrong. Oprah and Dr. Phil? Wrong. Billy Graham, Deepak Chopra, and the Dalai Lama –– all wrong. Trump and Clinton…yeah, they’ve got it wrong. Even your annoying spouse, who thinks […]
I turn forty one today. For the second year in a row, I’ve crafted myself a birthday present in the form of a story, written from the POV of a character who shares my same birthday. Most of my characters are loosely based on people I know in […]
The urge to mark epochs in our lives is irresistible, isn’t it? I think it’s a good thing. Now more than ever, I think it’s a good thing; after all, is there anyone who would disagree with the notion that time seems to be trucking along faster than […]
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”Ecclesiastes 1:9 “See, I am doing a new thing!” Isaiah 43:19 I’ve often wondered how it is that professional musicians don’t get burned out on their own music. […]
“Change alone is unchanging.” This old axiom is true scientifically, and it’s often easy to see. Technology changes, becomes faster and more convenient and less expensive at the same time. With technology, our relationships change from personal to digital––becoming much like reproductions of what were once authentic art […]
“I don’t think this celebration is about me. It’s about us as a family. It’s never been about me.” Anybody who knows Dave Kienlen would not be surprised to hear such words come from him during his own retirement speech. Look closely at those words, for they hold […]
Two golden discs of tissue paper float to the carpeted floor of my hotel room. I’ve heard it said that our heartiest laughter is the kind that is shared with others, but I manage a genuine chuckle, despite my being alone. Gold doubloons for everybody! The golden discs […]
You can’t expect to change the world with every sentence you write. It may be too much to expect you can change even a single heart with a thing you write. But we don’t write to change things any more than we sleep to wake up in the […]
I’m reading the third book in Brandon Sanderson’s The Reckoners series. In these books, Sanderson describes a version of our world in which a mysterious orb one day appears in the sky and miraculously grants superhuman abilities to a percentage of the world’s population. Some people develop […]
You said ‘God is cruel’ the way a person who’s lived his whole life in Tahiti might say ‘Snow is cold’. You knew, but you didn’t understand.” Stephen King, Desperation Days such as this exact pressure on a writer. There is pressure to write something poignant and profound, something […]