point of view

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POINT OF VIEW: The World Needs to Calm the F* Down.

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crazy - pixabay

Pride Season is upon us, and with it, so many things I have to do, and so little time to do them. We have two readings in Sacramento this week (thank you Jeff Adams for managing one of them!), two pride celebrations, an author lunch, and that’s just the stuff on my local author group plate. The world outside our doorstep seems to be spinning out of control, my writing is on hold until I can find time for it, and somehow I have about ten times as many things to do as I have time to do them. So … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Pride

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Scott 1992

We’re entering pride season, a time we celebrate our community – one that I have watched grow from “gay” to “gay and lesbian” to “GLBT” to “LGBT” to “LGBTIQA,” all over the course of my lifetime. I’m fifty-one this year, and as I look around, I am amazed at the number of pride celebrationsheld around the country. Almost every city has one, and Pride has become a commodity, a shiny rainbow-colored thing that in the process has lost some of its former meaning. This is part of the mainstreaming of queer culture that has had enormous benefits for our community, … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Gardening is Writing

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We writers are creative folk. Beyond writing, it’s not uncommon for us to have other creative pursuits – art, music, theater… or even gardening. I started vegetable gardening when I was in Junior High. Two of my friends went to the store with me, and we got seeds and soil and planted a garden in the side yard. I’d never really experienced some of the things we grew fresh. This was in the late seventies and early eighties, and much of what we ate at home came out of tin cans. The first time I had some fresh-cooked green beans … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Immersion

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immersion - pixabay

Last week I talked about the day-to-day distractions that take us out of or away from our writing time. Today I want to talk about immersion. Mark and I have been studying the Italian language for eleven years. It’s something I really enjoy, and something Mark and I do together a few times a week. Italian has become our own “secret” language, our way to communicate with each other when we don’t want the people around us to know what we’re saying. Of course, that only works if they’re not Italians. 😛 But as good as we’ve become at conjugation, … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Writing Is hard.

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penny - pixabay

Have you ever seen the movie Somewhere in Time? It featured Superman’s Christopher Reeve in a heartbreaking time traveler’s tale that revolved around a single penny. Reeve’s character found a way to go back in time by surrounding himself entirely with objects from the past and willing himself back to their period. His undoing? A single modern penny, forgotten in his pants pocket, that ultimately shatters the illusion and sends him back to his own time. Writing is like that, especially writing stories of the past or the future. We all know the present well enough, but throw one bad … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: When Life Throws You a Curve Ball

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curve ball - pixabay

I am not where I thought I’d be today. One of my family members had a health issue requiring sudden relocation from Sacramento to Tucson, Arizona, throwing my normal ordered schedule into chaos. I’m not officially OCD, but I do love to have things proceed according to schedule. It’s how I keep so many balls in the air at once – relationship, work, writing, and occasionally sleeping and eating. But a trip like this throws all that out the window. And who knew how difficult it could be to find good wifi in this day and age? Still, these are … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Small Joys

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Being a writer is a lonely profession. Most of your time is spent in front of your computer, alone, trying to spin words into worlds and fighting off those dreaded twin feelings of fraud and failure. So when something good happens, even if it’s just a “small joy,” you learn to embrace it and use it to feed your writing soul. Yesterday, my short story “Chinatown” came back from the first magazine I had submitted it to. It was rejected, but accompanied by a very nice note saying that the editor hoped it would find a home elsewhere. So I … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Things to Know About Me

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scott-bunny

Usually I use this space to talk about all things authorly, but today I thought I’d go a little more personal. I am deeply weird, in case you haven’t figured that out yet. So here are ten things about me you may not know. I Don’t Like Coffee. Yeah, I know. I am that one guy in the whole world who doesn’t drink the stuff (except for once in a while in frappucino form, with lots of mint and java chips and sugar to hide the taste). OTOH, drop me into a bookstore where there’s the mixed smell of coffee … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Climbing the Walls of SFWA (And Unleashing My Secret Creativity)

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Climbing - pixabay

I’m on a bit of an odyssey this year. I have always wanted to be a sci fi writer, and over the last five years, I have achieved that dream. In addition to my gay romance tales, I have published five sci fi novels, with a sixth due out in October. But one thing has eluded me. Most successful sci fi writers (and I use that term in the popular/financial sense) are members of SFWA (say it with me – “siff-wah”) – the Sci Fi Writer’s Association. But there’s a catch. To join, you have to either make at least … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: I Am My Father’s Son

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Bill Coatsworth

I am my father’s son. My father and mother separated when I was a little kid. Near as I can tell from the pictures, it was in 1973, when I was four or five. My Dad and Mom were… let’s just say, less than a perfect match for each other. When they divorced, my Dad moved out to an apartment across town, and I stayed with my Mom. That’s not to say that my Dad moved out of my life. Far from it. For all the angst in their relationship with each other, they always agreed on one thing – … Read more