Eric Barnes's Blog
RSS
Nov.14.2011
Breaking with all recent history, I went to a writers conference recently. I’ve avoided them for all kinds of reasons, mostly involving my total lack of interest in sitting in a room with a group of writers I don’t know and having my work critiqued.
Not that I mind having my work critiqued. I...
Continue Reading »
Sep.07.2010
I had to write a biographical blurb about myself recently as part of the promotion for this TV show I’m going to start hosting on our local public television station. I hate writing biographical blurbs. My tendency is to write something short, flat and restrained. But not in an interesting or...
Continue Reading »
Aug.29.2010
I’m on the mailing list for the Church of Scientology. Every day, I get an average of four pieces of direct mail related to Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard. Newsletters, book offers, catalogs selling a seemingly endless number of lectures by L. Ron Hubbard, and numerous invitations to...
Continue Reading »
Aug.20.2010
Somehow, when I was 35 years old, I found myself as Chief Operating Officer of a $15 million publishing company. We employed 200 people, we published all over the country, we had plans to grow even bigger, faster.
I think I got that title largely because of a moment some years earlier, when we...
Continue Reading »
Aug.20.2010
Somehow, when I was 35 years old, I found myself as Chief Operating Officer of a $15 million publishing company. We employed 200 people, we published all over the country, we had plans to grow even bigger, faster.
I think I got that title largely because of a moment some years earlier, when we...
Continue Reading »
Aug.07.2010
I’m looking for a new agent. I hate looking for an agent. Maybe some agent will read this before I even start the process of reaching out to people. Maybe they’ll magically, send me an email saying that they’d love to represent me.
Like the magical love affair in a sweet and simple book.
I’m...
Continue Reading »
Aug.04.2010
I have never seen Footloose. This seems important to me right now, although I'm not sure why.
Maybe it's that I'm finishing a manuscript, a novel, that's a relatively disturbing story. I wrote it many years ago, and am editing some parts now, and may start sending it out to agents soon.
Few of...
Continue Reading »
Jul.30.2010
Someone asked me about the similarities between Robbie and any real-life frauds who run companies around the world. One note about the following is that, a year or so into the first draft of Shimmer, I realized that Robbie, Perry and Trevor had never appeared in the same room together. That...
Continue Reading »
Jul.26.2010
I'm too old to be remotely embarrassed by the amount of sex in Shimmer. I suppose there's the requisite discomfort about my mother reading the book. But even that is minimal.
None of which is to say I wasn't ready for some negative reactions to the sex. There had been a couple of editors, in fact...
Continue Reading »
Jul.22.2010
The local MENSA group was nice enough to invite me to speak to their book club about Shimmer. This was a very nice thing for them to do, not least of which because it meant that, for weeks, I kept telling friends and family, “Sorry, but from now on, I’m only talking to geniuses.”
That’s the...
Continue Reading »
Jul.19.2010
I don't do research. And I don't make outlines. These are my conditions when writing.
Of course, they're only conditions I've set with myself. (Punch line: Even then, the negotiations are ugly.)
I do, however, make outlines after I'm well into a project. It might be 50 pages in, it might be 200...
Continue Reading »
Jul.19.2010
I don't do research. And I don't make outlines. These are my conditions when writing.
Of course, they're only conditions I've set with myself. (Punch line: Even then, the negotiations are ugly.)
I do, however, make outlines after I'm well into a project. It might be 50 pages in, it might be 200...
Continue Reading »
Jul.17.2010
When I'm writing something new, I tend to write far more than I ultimately use. Combined with my habit of writing out of order and without a outline (and without, early in the process, much sense of where I'm going), the whole effort is wildly inefficient.
But that's just how I write.
As a...
Continue Reading »
Jul.11.2010
People ask how much research I had to do to write Shimmer. For better or worse, I did virtually none.
My flippant response is always that I hate research. Which is true. The thought of doing any amount of research for something I write makes me panic, as if I’m back in a college English class,...
Continue Reading »
Jul.09.2010
There are a number of things that tend to surprise people about how I write. One is that, for the most part, I write out of order and without an outline.
The other surprise is that I listen to music while I write.
I know I’m not alone in doing this. But, for people who don’t write, it often...
Continue Reading »
About Eric
I am the writer of the novel Shimmer (Unbridled Books, Hardcover: July 2009, Paperback: July 2010). I am also the writer of the story "Something Pretty, Something Beautiful," which was included in Best American Mystery Stories 2011. Shimmer, an IndieNext Pick...
Connections
Eric’s Favorite Books
White Noise, Blood Meridian, Ulysess, Catch-22, The Sun Also Rises, The Sound and The Fury, Lolita