Jeff O'Handley

The Doubting Writer Finds His Voice

Elevation: A quasi review

Well, a little late today, but better late than never, right? Let’s hope so, anyway. I actually had some partially-written posts going, but when my alarm went off this morning I turned it off–then woke up forty minutes later and ended up short of time. I’ve had my alarm clock for probably twenty-five years (seriously!), […]

Gone Fishing

We’re still picking at the remains of Thanksgiving dinner here at my house, still delighting in turkey and stuffing (a once a year thing), sweet potato casserole and apple crisp. Thanksgiving is, in many ways, the loveliest of holidays, both because of the sentiment and the fact that you never have to ask, “What’re we […]

Finally

It finally happened. On Saturday morning, after inserting and feathering in an 810-word sequence, I sent off my manuscript to that “one more reader.” I kind of wanted to feel like Rocky running up the steps while training; I felt more like these two guys: I’m not sure which one’s the manuscript and which one’s […]

Almost there

I’ll admit it, I’m a little disappointed in myself. I was hoping to be done by now, but when I finished working on The Weighty Tome yesterday, I was on page 376 of what is now just 400 manuscript pages. So close! But I had put probably close to four hours in over the course […]

More Revising

Hoorah, hoorah! Two weeks ago, I finally reached the last page of my WiP! When I pushed back from my desk two Mondays ago, I had cut some 14,000 words from my bloated epic. Perhaps more important than pure word and page count, I was also able, I think, to shorten the ‘ramp up’ time […]

A note

This morning, I quick wrote a post about writing. At the close of it, I wanted to acknowledge the terrible events of the last week (pipe bombs, synagogue shooting), but I did not wish to relegate them to a footnote to a post about something as trivial as writing. At the same time, I really […]

The dreaming brain

Once, many years ago, I woke from a dream about….I don’t remember what. What I do remember about the dream is that someone or something was tapping. On a door, maybe. On a floor. I don’t remember who it was doing the tapping, or what they were tapping on, only that they were tapping. Tap, […]

The end draws ever closer

When I left off my manuscript yesterday evening, I was on page 365, just shy of 110,000 words. On the pages I printed out to help me with my revision, I’m on page 386, exactly 40 pages from THE END. There are two pages or so out of those last forty that have already been […]

Reading List, 2018, Part III

Technically, the end of the quarter was last week, but I chose to delay this post based on events in the world. Here are the list of books for the third quarter (July 1-September 30). Wolf Season (2017), Helen Benedict. Not bad. Local(ish) setting was familiar. The Outsider (2018), Stephen King. I love Stephen King. […]

Another year, another post like this

I may have told you this story before. Perhaps not. Whatever the case, I’m not sure what it is about this time of year that seems to bring this sort of thing out. Last year around now, I was writing about Harvey Weinstein. The year before that, Donald Trump and locker room talk. Maybe it’s […]