Drew Nicholson

I just wrote two book reviews for works by Masha du Toit, a fellow member of the Literary+ writers collective. Go check them out!




Review of Strange Neighbors.




Review of The Story Trap.

have a dancing wookie.

Literary+ is holding its first blog tour featuring author JD Savage. He'll
be talking about the new book: The Seeds and much more.

JD's first guest blog post can be found on Scott Roche's blog and is
entitled: Profanity in YA Novels

Literary+ is a writer based project brought together and lead by Shen Hart.
It brings together passionate, quality self-published writers to help each
other promote their work, bringing more readers to every member. It was
sparked by the simple fact that there are many top quality self-published
authors being over-looked because they do not have the time and resources
to efficiently and effectively market and promote themselves. With ambition
and passion, Literary+ will take its members to the heights they deserve
through a tight-knit community of like-minded writers.





anyone having a hard time commenting on LJ from their Chrome browser? I'm actually using (shudder) IE to post this becasue it won't work in Chrome either.

So this poem is a direct result of my wife making me clean up because we've got family coming in for the holiday. I found this buried in a stack of papers that I'd pulled out of an old binder. I'm pretty sure it's nearly 20 years old -- from around 1993-1994.



Now, don't get me wrong. The poem as originally written is HORRIBLE. Extraneous words, bad placement, etc. But it gave me the opportunity to edit and rewrite, which is something I need a lot of practice doing.



So here it is.



The Dark

(c) Drew Nicholson 2012



The dark makes everyone beautiful
soft focus the crags of age into the gently rolling hills of earlier years
clouds of eyelashes scud gently across your seafoam gaze

The dark makes everyone younger
brushing good full dirt into the cracks of accountability
encasing the resonant memories

The dark makes everyone quiet
enveloping sound with silence, deafening even those who do not hear
but listen, there! crickets hop across the meadow, I can tell

The dark makes everyone real
hands soft and gentle as I brush through the weight of tears
exposing everything masked by the light

The dark makes everyone open
the only place where you completely relax
no fear of the dark for you or I.

Writing and Creative Writing are two of the topics on this application I
have on my iPad and my Android phone called "Zite". It's a
news/site aggregator that works off of your selections and also your Google
Reader feed, if you have one. I've saved up some of the better links about
writing that I've found, and here they are.

Ray Bradbury's Seven Rules for Writers. (http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/ray-bradburys-7-rules-for-writers/)
A lot of people have posted about Ray Bradbury, who, of course, just died a
few weeks ago. I loved his short stories, especially "Fire and Ice". The
rule I find most difficult to do is rule 5 -- feed the muse daily. I'm not
the only writer who has a full-time job, and I'm sure everyone else finds
it as difficult as I do.

Writing Conflict. (http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/spice-up-your-fiction-simple-ways-to-create-page-turning-conflict/)
I'm still absorbing this one, but I like her ideas on how to keep the
conflict reasonable, and yet still generate tension.

Writing in the First Person. (http://www.wordstrumpet.com/2012/06/anwering-your-writing-questions-first-person.html)
Interestingly, I don't feel like writing in the first person is difficult
-- in fact, I find it harder to write in the third person, to the point
where I wrote a short story where at least four separate people took turns
being the first-person narrator. However, for those that do, this article
gives some good techniques for not falling into the "and then I did" and "I
thought", etc. (Hint -- it's a lot like writing in third person, which
makes me think that I'm a wuss for not doing it.)

20 Tips to Sharpen Your Writing. (http://www.writermag.com/Articles/2012/06/25%20tips%20to%20sharpen%20your%20writing.asp)
Finally, a tally sheet of tips designed to help writers draw readers in,
and keep them reading. I'm working on #3, and I do #9 all too often!
While it feels aimed at non-fiction writers, there's definitely stuff in
there that's good for us make-believe types too.

Only four links; I don't want to inundate anyone with too much information.
Got a good site for tips? Post in the comments!

I wrote this about a year ago. In between my first marriage and my second one, I had a torrid, passionate, flame-out affair that sometimes still stuns me with the level of ferocity and pain it enabled.


When I think about how we could have been
how we should have been
I realize instead how we would have been

Five years on
the pain has dulled
the confusion diminished

but every so often
something will remind me
of you or us

and the recriminations
and the what-ifs
and the whys

spill to the surface again
an underground spring
flooding a desert

until, thinking of how we could have been
how we should have been
leads to realizing how we would have been

And the desert drains
leaving behind fertile ground
for a new life
to be lived.



(c) 2012 Drew Nicholson

Check out my review of the space opera ebook Stars Rain Down by Chris Randolph, at A Paper Muse.

So I've got a new Blog -- A Paper Muse -- which I will be linking to from here regularly. That blog will be devoted exclusively to my writing and related topics. The first substantive post is On the Subject of Independent Author Payments, specifically how Amazon.com is taking a huge cut vs. other, more indie publishing venues.

I will continue to post here, at least as infrequently as I do now, of course. :D