J.B. Sommerset

(photocredit  pradiptafelix  from reshot.com) With all that is happening in the world, (and all that isn't) I find myself time-starved. I am working on a few more projects than I would have liked- some of which I want to work on and some of which are in the realms of 'adulting'. Those things are what must get done despite how much I want to play. The good news is I got over a few humps this last month. If I listen hard enough I can hear two things; the faint cheering of a crowd somewhere, and the sound of the world's smallest violin playing. I am not sure which I deserve more. So, here are a couple of announcements for the upcoming months: Firstly, there is more art coming, and more youtube videos of said art being created. As soon as I can unpack my mic, some of it will have commentary and maybe some short stories, something I have wanted to do for a long time but never got around to.  Second, I am still working on my novels and will be posting some excerpts from them....

One of my all-time favorite books, and movies, come to think of it, is Fight Club . It's one of the few books I saw the movie for before I read the book- and still loved it! From that moment forward, I started reading all of the author's ( Chuck Palahniuk ) works. I chewed through them as fast as he could write them. Even now if there is a new one, I guarantee I will pick it up. Every now and then I listen to a new interview and rediscover him all over again. This week I found a new (at least to me) interview and thought I would share it with all of you. So cheers, and enjoy it!  

Great stories are constructed in different ways, depending on the author and their unique combination of strengths. Some are strong in description, some flow well, others use plot, language, atmosphere, (etc) to make their work stand out. Every author has that thing that makes them special, a way of writing which is completely their own; this is called their style . I’ve talked about this before, and I am going to do it again. It boils down to an undeniable fact; all the greats can be recognized by their stylistic choices and the way they write. This is true across many different genres and ages, from Homer  and  Shakespeare  to more contemporary authors such as Asimov ,  Nicholas Sparks,  or J.K. Rowling . Popular authors get recognized and stay recognizable by the way they write, and by how they can take those seven basic plots and transform them into a masterpiece.   When I first read “It” by Stephen King , I didn’t really stop to think how stupid t...

One of the hardest parts of novel writing, also a trap that many writers fall into, is counting words. All of us writers want to write our Opus Maximus, with umpteen-trillion words and several appendices to attach. You know, that book that people look at and ask "you wrote that?" with disbelief. So what do we do? We watch the word counter and struggle to stretch our work. The horrible truth is that words don't make a story, a story makes a story. No matter how many words we try for, it has to be a natural process and it must be authentic and flow well. Readers are like bloodhounds, they can sniff out a faker. If most of the words seemed forced, your work will smell like used gym socks to an avid reader; they will know you faked it, and all the extra words will ruin your work. Of course, depending on the type of writing, there are submissions that require a specific amount of verbiage (Collegiate papers, medical journals, technical writing, etc.), we are not talki...