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Pilgrimage Pilgrimage | words and music, and the

English - Blues, Thriller, Writing
http://johnbairdrogers.com/
Pilgrimage · 1M ago

Smile, and the whole world wonders what you’re up to

It is said (apparently inaccurately) that the Inuit have many words for ‘snow.’  Why would that be?  Why, because they see a lot of snow, of course. English has very few words for ‘smile,’ e...
Pilgrimage · 1M ago

No Genres!

Louise Penny, quoted in the New York Times book review, August 24th:  “I don’t buy into the notion of genres, perhaps for obvious reasons. I think that’s an effective marketing tool, but not...
Pilgrimage · 2M ago

Listening to One’s Characters

I am a product of my age and education. As a result, I read instruction manuals rather than pounding buttons on gizmos to see what happens. When I open the box, I look for the manual (or, th...
Pilgrimage · 2M ago

Google and Real Places

Google is wonderful.  For a person writing thrillers, it’s a critical resource.  Need a Russian phrase?  No problem. An overhead view of a village like Hainburg an der Donau in Austria (my s...
Pilgrimage · 3M ago

Critique Groups and the Mirror

As I pass through the stations of writing skill improvement, I am realizing that I have a custom set of writing weaknesses.  I got a notion of it from critique groups … the same issues kept ...
Pilgrimage · 4M ago

A Birthday Present from Grammar

I got a great birthday card, the front of which said: Dear people of the World, I don’t mean to sound slutty, But please use me whenever you want.     Sincerely,     Grammar A great card on ...
Pilgrimage · 4M ago

Genre, Storytelling, Literary Fiction

I recently applied to a contest that asked, as part of the upload, what the genre of my novel is.  I answered dutifully, Thriller. Yes, I know that the judges have to have some way to classi...
Pilgrimage · 5M ago

Pantser … or not

There are two approaches to writing fiction.  A Pantser writes from the seat of the pants. The writer lets the characters pull the story along. An Outliner (maybe we should say ‘Engineer’) l...
Pilgrimage · 5M ago

Writing with Feeling

I read a submission guideline the other day that sliced novelists into ‘beginner’ and ‘experienced’ using the following cleaver:  “you may consider your work for the experienced category if ...
Pilgrimage · 6M ago

Pitch-Query-Synopsis

Over the past couple of months, I’ve attended three conferences (one by Internet) that featured pitches or queries.  Friends asked for a summary. The summary grew longer than a blog post, so...
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