The Angle of The Dangle

September 1, 2019
   Last Thursday and Friday I had some major fun with these two cats:

   Ed Mell and BFG in front of "Jacknife"

   When you hang out with Ed Mell for two days, you start to see angles in the sky you never saw before.

Ed Mell Sky Angles Over Ratcliff Ridge

   Also, when you wake up in the morning, glad your boots are on. . .sorry, that is a Bruce Springsteen lyric I can't get out of my head.

   When you wake up to gruesome headlines and then go for a walk, you will often see things in a new light, and perhaps small things will now seem to be major blessings.

Home Sweet Home

   looking for answers with, perhaps, too many clues:

   Let the wrong books go and wait for the right one to come along.

  Something needs to be present at the heart of the story for it to work.

  There are projects you do because you're solving puzzles, and there are projects you do because you need to tell a story. 

   Ask yourself, Who are these people and why are they making all these terrible decisions? From there you should be able to determine the burning question about WHY the story is being told at all. Without this the entire work collapses.

There are three different categories of theme all writers have to contend with:

1. There are the things all books are about, like mortality and love.

2. Then there are the things a particular book is about: man's relationship to nature, or the aftershocks of empire.

3. And then there are the themes YOU write about, things that you keep returning to, even if you think you have already dealt with them in your work.

Daily Whip Out: "Honkytonk Entanglement"

   And, by the way, BFG, stands for Billy "Flippin' Gibbons.

"The angle of the dangle, is equal to the heat of the meat."
—Old Horndog Saying