Die Hard Is A Christmas Movie
And I can prove it. Or rather, Dean Wesley Smith and I have proven it. For years, we used to travel around the country teaching writing with something called The Kris & Dean Show. One of the features of the class was that Dean and I would go through Die Hard, sometimes line by line, talking about […]…
https://kriswrites.com/2025/12/14/die-hard-is-a-christmas-movie/
Recommended Reading List (Belated Edition): May 2025
Yep, I’m late. I was busy last year working on saving the business, so I got behind on things like the Recommended Reading List. I thought of bunching everything into one list, but I didn’t want to, and then I thought of pretending I hadn’t missed, and I didn’t want…
https://kriswrites.com/2025/12/13/recommended-reading-list-belated-edition-may-2025/
#freenonfiction #Mysteries #OnWriting #Romances #BillboardMagazine
Hollywood Squares Edtech Edition
There are probably a few good reasons I haven’t yet blogged about my makeshift “On Writing” panel for Reclaim Open in early November. One of them might be my last-minute decision to turn it into an episode of [[Hollywood Squares]]—specifically, the “EdTech Edition.” And to pull that off, I leaned hard on my trusty sidekick ChatGPT for a full-blown series of questions (four or five […]
I’ve been working on a short story for the Tough Guy Book Club competition this fall — and today I’m finally sharing it.
Here’s the behind-the-scenes story of how Hopeless came to be.
(And thank you, truly, for reading.)
Interview with Jonas Hassen Khemiri
"if something appears, there’s a great potential cost if you start to question it...All of those questions are incredibly effective if you want to kill a project"
#literature #bookstodon #interview #bookReview #onWriting #fiction
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-story-needs-to-shake-you-up/
Hand-Write. Think Better.
A method for people who feel overwhelmed to start writing more on paper—which makes everything else easier
I’ve written a guide which shows how to use notebooks for clearer thinking: one notebook, simple practices, no elaborate systems. Written to help you stop re-thinking the same things and close open loops.
https://craigconstantine.gumroad.com/l/hand-write-think-better
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#commonplaceNotebooks #journaling #knowledgeSystems #notebooks #onWriting #podcasting
I use the commenting feature while I'm drafting* to leave myself notes about things I need to look up, or maybe context about what one character knows that another doesn't. That kind of thing.
Or helpful little tips like above.
*This is part of how I keep writing until I reach my goal for that session: don't stop to do other things, make a note and keep going.
Two-fer from an introduction
I’m currently in the Introduction from Will Stone’s translation of, Montaigne by Stefan Zweig. Two things:
First, a nit about getting the right ideas into our minds when we read. Not a criticism of authors’ (such as Stone) word choices, but rather of our thinking correctly as readers.
Stone quotes Zweig as, “How to keep humanity intact in the throes of bestiality?” Stone’s translation is from 2015, and our current English usage carries sexual connotations. But I had a hunch that Zweig had something like “in the way of beasts” in mind since he was writing in German, in Brazil, in 1941, amidst the global throes of WWII.
It took me just a few moments to get an LLM to show me that Zweig almost certainly wrote «Bestialität»—which in Zweig’s German would have meant brute savagery or barbaric cruelty with no modern (circa 2025) sexual connotation. And in the larger context of the brutality of the war, that connotation makes perfect sense.
Second, further along Stone quotes a vivid metaphor from Zweig relating to suicidal ideation:
[…] always in moments of impotence it emerged, surging powerfully upwards like a dark rock whenever the tide of passions and hopes in his soul ebbed.
Relax; I’m not suicidal. I’m only remarking on the sublime perfection of that metaphor.
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I think M needed J to get the action going. She wasn't really in a state to do that, at the beginning of the scene. That may be part of why it was hard to pick it up with her to start with.
But now that I know what J was going to do to get things going (from writing it yesterday), it was easy enough to have M perceive J doing that, and then do her thing.
Oh! And I just remembered: yesterday, when started to write this scene, I was like, this should be M's pov (this is correct, it's her scene).
But it was just..? Sort of... happening? From J's pov. I tried to course correct for a while, then gave in.
If the writing wants to be something, I'll let it. That's what revision is for. Or rewriting.
It's a better scene now that it's told by the correct character, but I don't regret writing it the other way first.
From the correct character pov, I believe. This is her scene. It needs to be told by her.
It's the strangest sensation. I know this story, and I know it well. It has been with me in one form or another my entire adult life and then some.
And yet, when I sit in front of an empty page, I'm never sure what I am going to write.
I think I know the bones of the scene, and then the characters show me something new.
I thought I knew what it meant for characters to speak to you, for characters to have minds of their own. I've experienced that.
But it's never been like this.
I still don't have words for how I am writing this. I want to say it feels like a dream—it feels like it *should* feel like a dream—but what it really feels is grounded.
Like there's ground under my feet.
oh fuck. ground under my feet.
I *have* felt this before.
I need to reflect.
(Why is this happening in September.)
I think of the drafting doc and the reference doc like a tree:
The part of the tree you see above ground (the drafting doc) is balanced by the vast root system that supports it underground (the reference doc).
And just like the leaves of a tree nourish the roots, the draft, as it's written, feeds into the reference doc and makes the framework of the story more robust and complex.
Recommended Reading List: March 2025
I had some strange experiences in my March reading. I taught a Gothic class in May, with an emphasis on Gothic romance. I loooove Gothic romance, and am not horribly fond of Gothic horror. But I chose a couple of books I hadn’t read before…and one of them! OMG! It started okay, had great…
https://kriswrites.com/2025/07/25/recommended-reading-list-march-2025/
#freenonfiction #OnWriting #RecommendedReading #Amazon #BarbaraBroccoli
@indieauthors
Important Announcement Regarding My Short Fiction
If you had asked me a year ago whether or not I would write a post like this, I would have laughed at you. Then I heard from an industry friend that the sf and mystery digest magazines were for sale. It looked like, he said, they would be selling soon.
https://kriswrites.com/2025/07/13/important-announcement-regarding-my-short-fiction/
#BusinessMusings #freenonfiction #OnWriting #AlfredHitchcockMysteryMagazine #Analog
@indieauthors
Cheryl Morgan: You have both written eco-scifi. Can you tell us a little bit about how you approach these difficult environmental themes?
#jeffvandermeer: I didn’t set out to write eco fiction. It’s just that I’ve lived in so many places with magnificient biodiversity, like Southern Florida. So, that’s just sort of seeped into my writing.
#EmmiItäranta: I didn’t set out to write eco fiction either. It’s just that I have a lot of anxiety about the world and what humans are doing to the environment. So, of course that’s reflected in my writing.
It’s true what they say, then: Life always finds a way (in)! #archipelacon2 #OnWriting #ecofiction #ecoscifi
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
What are three impactful books to me and why?
http://michaelleask.ca/2025/06/18/list-three-books-that-have-had-an-impact-on-you-why/
#1984 #animalfarm #books #EndersGame #fiction #impactfulbooks #OnWriting #reading #StarryMesenger #StarshipTroopers #TheHobbit #TheLordOfTheRings
Chris Long "On Writing"
https://archive.reclaim.tv/videos/watch/c51e54d1-4178-491c-86f5-02f8fb1b3e2f
You can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, *you will.*
(I received this a bunch of years ago at an 826 Boston gala; been waiting for the right moment to crack it open.
(This was it.)
