Ralph Pullins

I remember finding out about the suicide of Kurt Cobain.  I was with my brother in 13th Ave Music, our local indie record store (anyone remember those?), and it was written up on the whiteboard where the new releases were usually written.  For those of us that were into his music, it was an unexpected shock; we were young and alive, and the man who had sung all our songs, so new and vital in a way that only is possible when you first hear something that speaks to you, somehow, he wasn't.  It was a strange thing to be sad for the death of a man you had never met.  It felt personal, but not; it felt devastating, but not.  A real voice, an original talent, was stilled, and all the songs that might have spoken to us would never be written.  It has happened to me since then, Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut and so on. Sir Terry Pratchett died recently. and I have been thinking of him a lot since then.  It is a strange thing to be sad for the death of a man y...

I remember finding out about the suicide of Kurt Cobain.  I was with my brother in 13th Ave Music, our local indie record store (anyone remember those?), and it was written up on the whiteboard where the new releases were usually written.  For those of us that were into his music, it was an unexpected shock; we were young and alive, and the man who had sung all our songs, so new and vital in a way that only is possible when you first hear something that speaks to you, somehow, he wasn't.  It was a strange thing to be sad for the death of a man you had never met.  It felt personal, but not; it felt devastating, but not.  A real voice, an original talent, was stilled, and all the songs that might have spoken to us would never be written.  It has happened to me since then, Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut and so on. Sir Terry Pratchett died recently. and I have been thinking of him a lot since then.  It is a strange thing to be sad for the death of a m...

Something you should know about writing a book: it takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of work. You do the writing, the line editing, you send it out to friends to read.  You wait.  They take forever getting back to you.  You want feedback and you want it now, but it's a novel right?  It takes time for people to read.  They finally get back to you, except for a few stragglers, then you have to implement (or reject entirely) all the suggested changes.  Then while you do that, you find a ton of stuff you missed on your initial edit that needs fixed, then you add some things that you intended to put in there originally, but didn't, and then you realize that those changes, now seen as crucial to the integrity of the book, change stuff that happened before, so you have to go through the entire manuscript and fix all that stuff for continuity.  This part takes forever, because during all this, you also probably have a job, you have to take the kids to s...

Something you should know about writing a book: it takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of work. You do the writing, the line editing, you send it out to friends to read.  You wait.  They take forever getting back to you.  You want feedback and you want it now, but it's a novel right?  It takes time for people to read.  They finally get back to you, except for a few stragglers, then you have to implement (or reject entirely) all the suggested changes.  Then while you do that, you find a ton of stuff you missed on your initial edit that needs fixed, then you add some things that you intended to put in there originally, but didn't, and then you realize that those changes, now seen as crucial to the integrity of the book, change stuff that happened before, so you have to go through the entire manuscript and fix all that stuff for continuity.  This part takes forever, because during all this, you also probably have a job, you have to take the kids to...

This is obviously a companion piece to my previous post; it is something I wrote some time ago, and it seems that my feelings on the matter have changed very little.   ------------------------------- Family Stories When I was young, my mother told me of one of her dreams.   I was small, single digits probably, but even now I remember it.   My mother’s dream is one common to parents I think; I have had dreams different but similar since the birth of my own sons. I wonder sometimes about people’s desire to tell others of their dreams because the stories they tell are invariably boring and inaccurate.   I think of the most dark, private thoughts in my own head and the way they are expressed in dreams sometimes and I wonder if it is a favor that God did us that we are mostly unable to remember them. In my mother’s dream, she was in a speeding car, in the passenger seat.   On the hood of the car was my brother as a little kid, a toddler probably, hanging on.   ...

This is obviously a companion piece to my previous post; it is something I wrote some time ago, and it seems that my feelings on the matter have changed very little.   ------------------------------- Family Stories When I was young, my mother told me of one of her dreams.   I was small, single digits probably, but even now I remember it.   My mother’s dream is one common to parents I think; I have had dreams different but similar since the birth of my own sons. I wonder sometimes about people’s desire to tell others of their dreams because the stories they tell are invariably boring and inaccurate.   I think of the most dark, private thoughts in my own head and the way they are expressed in dreams sometimes and I wonder if it is a favor that God did us that we are mostly unable to remember them. In my mother’s dream, she was in a speeding car, in the passenger seat.   On the hood of the car was my brother as a little kid, a toddler p...