DAVID'S DASHBOARD

2011-09-17T19:08:00.000-07:00

Phyllis A. Whitney || In Her Own words

"... Like any other artist you must learn your craft—then you can add all the genius you like ..."

2011-04-09T07:21:00.000-07:00

In His Own Words || David Mamet

"Every scene should be able to answer three questions: 'Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?'"

2011-04-05T00:42:00.000-07:00

William Golding || In His Own Words

"The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it."
~ William Golding

2011-03-29T20:14:00.000-07:00

"If you don't say what you want, what's the sense of writing?"

- Jack Kerouac

2011-03-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

Edward Abbey || In His Own Words

"The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book."

2011-02-28T17:28:00.000-08:00

Frank McCourt || In his Own Words

"There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore."

— Frank McCourt

2011-02-14T19:28:00.000-08:00

Carl Sagan || In His Own Words

❝In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. ❞ ~ Carl Sagan

2011-02-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

Zadie Smith || In Her Own Words

"The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with."
— Zadie Smith

"The past is always tense, the future perfect." — Zadie Smith

"The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life."

— Zadie Smith

"The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport. "

— Zadie Smith

"When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottoes, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognize and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception." — Zadie Smith

"Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection." — Zadie Smith

"He was bookish, she was not; he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice." — Zadie Smith

2011-01-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King || In His Own Words

"On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it political?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right."

— Martin Luther King Jr.

2011-01-13T20:20:00.000-08:00

Stephen King || In His Own Words

Quotes on Writing and Other Things

❝Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.❞
~ Stephen King

2011-01-09T10:49:00.000-08:00

William Faulkner || In His Own Words

❝ Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write.❞

༺༻ William Faulkner

2011-01-06T11:24:00.000-08:00

An Evening With Ray Bradbury || 2001

Science fiction author Ray Bradbury regales his audience with stories about his life and love of writing in "Telling the Truth," the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University. Series: Writer's Symposium By The Sea ...

2011-01-03T20:05:00.000-08:00

Tuesdays With Morrie || The Man Himself

This was the subject of Mitch Albom's best-selling book 'Tuesdays With Morrie', Professor Morrie Schwartz, former sociology teacher at Brandeis University. Here in an interview with Ted Koppel Morrie shares his lessons on life, in his final class.

2011-01-02T17:42:00.000-08:00

E.B. White || In His Own Words

"...Delay is natural to a writer. I walk around, straightening pictures on the wall, rugs on the floor - as though not until everything in the world is lined up and perfectly true could anybody reasonable expect me to set a word down on paper ..."

- E. B. White

Currently posted: 'The Shut Up And Write' Official User Manual

2011-01-01T12:10:00.000-08:00

Bare Bones Writing – Dig It!

The Lost Blog Post

This was a post I was supposed to put up at the Writer's Den in late November, explaining my futile and strange writing process while attempting National Novel Writing Month. At the time it sounded rather whiny and excuse-laden (typical David!) but upon re-reading it I find that it's quite interesting: it illustrates the inner workings of a writer In Media Res; in the midst of the chaos we call 'Writing'. So enjoy my first blog post of 2011, a little thing called ... Bare Bones Writing.

"...But still I keep writing, leaving a trail of badly composed (or decomposed) phrases and half realized scenes ..."

Three weeks ago I was cajoled into taking part in National Novel Writing Month, not because I was shamed into it, but because I saw how much fun everyone was having in the grand attempt to get a book written in 30 days.

Did I say fun? Ha!

Sure, the word count starts off at a manageable clip: 1666 words a day. But when you miss a day, that total climbs by 58 words, then 118, and so on. There’s really no time to mess around. When you start missing two or three days, well, it gets ugly, but the prospect of a marathon session of 10,000 words always seems to soothe the blasted soul and scuppers the guilt for a while.

Until you miss another day, and another. And, who wants to slug out 10,000 words under such pressure?

This is what happens when you start to ponder the incoherent mess being dictated on the pages of your novel ...CONT. ->

2010-12-31T11:12:00.000-08:00

The Last Blog Post || 2010

Year End Address || David Hunter

At the end of my first decade on this planet, when 1979 turned over to 1980, I remember being frightened by the number. It represented the unknown, and for a little kid the unknown was awfully scary. When the 80’s ended I was more concerned at how strange the number 1990 looked. And in 1999 …

Well, you get the picture.

I’m nostalgic by nature; I used to get sentimental watching final episodes of old TV shows (The best was M*A*S*H, but the saddest was The Wonder Years …) and watching a new year turn over always gave me that weird feeling, that sensation of being hurled into unknown territory, after all, the New Year is unscripted, an unknown quality. What lies beyond December 31st, 2010? Who knows.

It’s all in the mind of course; there’s no cataclysmic changes set to occur on January 1st, 2011, but the very date suggests change, catharsis, new meanings, new resolves, new feelings, new directions; and when the winds of change take hold people tend to go with the flow. In other words, people will change things, not a date on a calendar. But oh what those changes bring!

Because it’s not just a new year, but a new decade, and if you look back, you’ll find that the turn of a decade brings about great changes (See 1950: Rock ‘n Roll, 1960: Hippies, long hair, Psychedelia, 1970: Disco, Earth-tones and Heavy Metal, 1980: New Wave, MTV, Rap …etc, etc ... and with that in mind, I guess there's nothing we can do but ride the wave of this coming decade, and see where it takes us.

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things. ~ John Burroughs

So here’s to the people we left behind, the old ideas, the old ideologies, the old words, the old fads, crazes and trends, the old clothes, the old music, the old movies, the old TV shows, the old books, the old tragedies, calamities and disasters ... but not the old friends: those we keep, along with our hope for a better world.

It’s a new decade; let’s make something new of it, okay?

Happy New Year, from David Hunter and the Writer’s Den.

Le Buzz on David Hunter

I’ve been growing rather static on the blog front, so I decided to try and improve the Writer’s Den with a few changes. Mostly, the changes consist of writing more content (and more writing is always a good thing …) and adding more features. One of those features is a new Dashboard called Wiki-Den, intended as a hub for all my activity: links to stories, articles, Writing Resources and other things. It’s a ‘Wiki’ because it’s short and quick information for the time-challenged peruser. And lord knows we’re all a little time-challenged …

I want to thank all of the Den’s readers, you made this blog possible; I know it’s been wildly inconsistent and there have been long stretches between posts, but I hope to rectify that in the New Year (Hope!) and I wish you all the best. Be blessed, and take care. May we meet again soon.

Time to go: It’s almost 2011, and there’s a party waiting.

2010-12-30T17:18:00.000-08:00

Retro Den Presents:

The Writer’s Life: A Bohemian Manifesto

"... The writing has taken over. I feel like a true bohemian lately ..."

You wouldn’t believe how I’ve been living lately; food has been a low priority. So has housekeeping; there are articles, magazines, newspaper clippings and related dementia strewn across my work area. Seems my books have been multiplying like rabbits too (although I have twelve thousand books, I still felt compelled to buy Stephen King’s Detective novel The Colorado Kid for two bucks at a yard sale) When I do eat I take impatient spoon-full’s of food, chew hastily and return to my computer; I’ve been subsisting on PB & J sandwiches and tea. The writing has taken over. I feel like a true bohemian lately.

It’s the book of course, isn’t it always? And the blogs, like this one. I think about them all day, then I come home and think about them some more, then whenever the synapses are firing correctly I dive in and try to get something down on the page before my famously wiggy short-term memory kicks in and wipes the slate clean. Sometimes I stew over an idea (usually at 5 AM or thereabouts) and get all excited and start wandering in circles, coffee in hand, searching for a pen or something to scribble a note on ... Cont ->

2010-12-29T20:26:00.000-08:00

Loren Eiseley || In His Own Words

"... Man is always marveling at what he has blown apart, never at what the universe has put together, and this is his limitation ..."

- Loren Eiseley

"While wandering a deserted beach at dawn, stagnant in my work, I saw a man in the distance bending and throwing as he walked the endless stretch toward me. As he came near, I could see that he was throwing starfish, abandoned on the sand by the tide, back into the sea. When he was close enough I asked him why he was working so hard at this strange task. He said that the sun would dry the starfish and they would die. I said to him that I thought he was foolish. there were thousands of starfish on miles and miles of beach. One man alone could never make a difference. He smiled as he picked up the next starfish. Hurling it far into the sea he said, "It makes a difference for this one." I abandoned my writing and spent the morning throwing starfish."

— Loren Eiseley

"One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human."

— Loren Eiseley

"To have dragons one must have change; that is the first principle of dragon lore." — Loren Eiseley

2010-12-29T12:33:00.000-08:00

Harlan Ellison: Pay the Writer!

David's Dashboard

2010-01-29T23:34:00.000-08:00

The Writer's Den Home Page

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The Campfire Pages - Fiction

The Campfire Pages - Fan-Fiction

Forever Night Shade: Novel Excerpts

Photo Genesis: Photos by David Hunter

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PROJECT~HUNTER: STUFF FROM MY BRAIN