No Man But A Blockhead

Personal Essays Ranging from How-to-Write, to Humor, to Fond and Not-so-Fond Memories of the Biz, From a Long-Time Toiler in the Fields of Genre.“No man,” ole Sam said, “but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”I don’t think that is strictly true, but if you can get paid for it, why shouldn’t you? After thirty-odd years, sixty-some novels, four dozen short stories, a bunch of reviews, animated television scripts, couple of screenplays and even a blog, I’ve put out close to seven million words for which I have been paid. A dozen titles have made the New York Times Bestseller List, though most of that money, alas, went elsewhere ...Not all that much pay, but enough to largely keep the wolves from the door -- though they sometimes make it to the yard. My writing helped send my kids through school and gave them back-up jobs -- Conan the College Tuition for My Son; The Nepotist and His Daughter, just to name the first two that come to mind. It occurred to me that there are some folks out there who might be able to glean something useful from my experiences in the word-trade, so I’ve gathered up some of my -- pardon the expression -- wit and wisdom and plunked ‘em down here.What follows are essays, some short, some long, on assorted aspects of writing, from funny stories, to how-to, to commonly asked questions I sometimes get from newbie writers. Regular readers of my blog (www.themanwhonevermissed.blogspot.com) had a chance to see most of these entries as I composed and posted them. I figure that clumping them altogether here will save folks the time and effort of trying to hunt them down, and that’s worth a little something.This is not a reference book -- there are essay headings, but no index. The pieces are in an order I thought entertaining.The names, sometimes the sex, and locations of some of the people used as examples have been changed to protect the guilty. Mostly the material is rated Pg-13. Now and then it moves into R, and might even shade into NC-17. If such things bother you, stop reading now. Some of it might be useful. Some of might be entertaining. See what you think. I had fun writing ‘em -- I hope you have fun reading ‘em ...