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Finding the Value of National Novel Writing Month

It is already five days into National Novel Writing Month and I don’t have much to show for it. Another National Novel Writing Month “competition” has arrived and I am, once again, most likely not going to have fifty thousand words written by the end of the month. In all likelihood, I will abandon the novel I started planning a few months ago but only really decided upon a few days ago, and I will not look back upon the text until next year, when I wonder what I have been doing for the last eight years.

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Howard Zinn: Public Enemy Number One?

American historian Howard Zinn died in January at the age of 87 — but Zinn will live forever in the Panopticonic infamy of a 423-page FBI dossier.

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I Will Know It When I See It

There is no greater moment of trepidation for a Playwright — or any author, really — when you’re dealing with a Director or an editor who replies — “I’ll know it when I see it” — in response to your asking for clarification on a change they want made.

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Thinking About Eric Bentley

In thinking about Eric Bentley as he stretches beyond his 93rd birthday, we are torn between the genius of his writing and his coldness as a man.  Will the writing endure?  Or will the chilly memory frost the evergreen talent?

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Revision Over Rewriting

When you finish writing a script, it is never really done.  There will always be changes and how you handle the construction of those changes will define your life as an author in the center of the creative core.

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Celebrating Cy Coleman

I had great love and admiration for composer Cy Coleman.  We met on “The Will Rogers Follies” and we stayed in touch after that show was over until his untimely death from at massive heart attack in 2004 at the too-young age of 75.

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Writer Groups Ruin Writers

The business of writing is not mystical or special.  Writing is tough and thankless work and I don’t know a working writer who has time to stop to attend a writer’s group because the author is either in the middle of a deadline or is collapsing after just hitting a drop-dead date.

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