You wonder if you have something good to say, something better than usual because you’ve been quiet.  Time passes and the burden grows.  After a while it becomes hard to say anything at all.  Partly I’m silent because I think it’s the better course of action.  I don’t know if what I want to say [...]

Here are the highlights of my latest writing playlist, named “Samuel”, after the character over whom my tight-lipped third person limited-omniscient narrat(or)-camera hovers for the latter half of my third novel.  Included in this list, culled from well over one hundred songs, are the powerhouse tracks that really influence me.  I’ll explain why for each.  [...]

It has been a hell of a couple days.  My interweb waves come to you from stolen wifi at my old house.  I traveled across the country and brought some west-coast sickness with me.  That’s right, Ohio, I’m diversifying your immune systems.  You’ll thank me later.
Let’s backtrack a little.  The house in Riverside has been [...]

I’ve deleted two posts trying to write this down.  I’ve had trouble concentrating late at night and I have trouble sleeping–though the latter’s nothing new.  I feel like I’ve successfully compartmentalized myself.  I feel like I’m in a Murakami novel.  I’ve put my heart and brain away in jars and I take them down from [...]

“If I had not existed, someone else would have written me…What is important is Hamlet and A Midsummer Nights Dream, not who wrote them, but that somebody did.” ~ William Faulkner
I have a problem with people calling writing anything other than exactly what it is: a person sitting down (or standing, whatever works) and writing [...]

This post will be one in a two or three parter, provided I feel like following through with it, on the capital letter issues of writing.  Truth and big W writers. Maybe a little Beauty thrown in for good measure.
Being in an MFA program, surrounded by writers, some of us are bound to get a [...]

There is a tendency for people to call me by my last name.  I don’t know why this is.  Furthermore, they have a tendency to shorten my name to Shonk, or Shonky.  I hate this with a passion.  What I don’t hate, though, is when my name gets turned into a verb, which has now [...]

It was almost ten years ago that I fell in love with a girl who cannot be overstated in my life.  I don’t remember how exactly things came about–I don’t recall any seduction.  I remember sitting on the sidewalk with the sun beginning to set, thinking about God, and her, and hoping she’d come outside.  [...]

Walked out of my new house this afternoon with Long December playing.  Strange to listen to it while in California, strange still to see palm trees, to walk outside in late October with the sun hot.  The song means a lot to me.  Like most songs I’ve pinned it to a woman, and in this [...]

I love the hell out of this song.  The voice just barely holding onto its hushed tone.  You can hear Beam biting on the end of every word.  I picture teeth chopping at the microphone.  I think I’m exaggerating a bit, but when I sing it I can’t help but sing it loud.
Anyway.  That song [...]