Writings

• Writer at Work: Be Specific

      1. John had a horse. That sentence tells you something, but not a lot.      2. John had a stallion. We’re getting somewhere. That tells you what kind of horse it is, and should put a more vivid or at least specific image in your mind as a reader.  An expert on horses might go into more specifics and...

• A Passion to Ride, A Passion to Race

  You head out on your Surly Pacer as the dappled sunlight glints off its shiny steel frame. You leave a day of work and those cares behind you as you pedal. Your body, slightly stiff from a day of holding itself up in office chairs while you hunched over a keyboard, begins to feel both looser and...

• Dialogue: More Than Just Talk

  People talk. We’re always talking. If you go anywhere, you’ll notice people constantly talking. Our age of social media is just another form of talk; texting and talking on our phones, reading on our phones, reading what people are talking to us about. As an exercise, perhaps even a punishment, some...

• We Ride With the Cicadas

  As you pedal through the heart of the town and head out of Oberlin, you’re immediately hit with a din, something between a buzzing and chirping, a crackling that grows louder and louder. At first I thought it was buzzing electricity, transmission from the municipal power plant as I rode past that....

• When Writers Do Bad Things to Editors

  Mostly when writers do bad things, the main bad thing they do is write badly. But that’s not all of it. There’s a lot of related behavior that comes with writing badly that compounds what writers are doing, or not doing. In the article, “When Editors Do Bad Things to Your Book,” I highlighted the...

• When Editors Do Bad Things To Your Book

  Okay, so you got that contract, you’ve worked long days and nights maybe taking in a bit more caffeine than you ordinarily would, and you’ve got that thing done. Your book  is a beast, a beast at times you hated but ultimately it’s a lovable beast, and you’re satisfied. Congratulations, you’ve...

• If You’re Very Overweight

  If you are fifty or one hundred or more pounds overweight, you don’t need anybody to tell you what you want to do.  You want to lose that excess weight—permanently.  You want it to be the last time you have to do this.   You also know that before you undertake any serious weight loss program,...

• Muscle, Smoke & Mirrors (Vol. I): A Work of Majesty

  Book by Randy Roach, Review by Greg Sushinsky   Into the world of bodybuilding writing and thinking enters the heaviest of heavyweights, gravity comes not from its size or the number of pages, but from the quality of its content, the mastery of its author’s insight. All at once, this major work from...