June 23

Birthdays: Anna Akhmatova (1889), Alfred Kinsey (1894), Winifred Holtby (1898), Michael Shaara (1928), Richard Bach (1936), David Leavitt (1961), Hugh Howey (1975), Markus Zusak (1975),

Michael Shaara won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “The Killer Angels”

Richard Bach is best known for his book “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”

Quote: “If you want to earn a living as a writer, which I’m assuming the people asking for my advice are, you are going to have to be more than a writer. You will be an entrepreneur and a publicist. Or you won’t make it.” – Hugh Howey

“Males do not represent two discrete populations; heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats, and not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behaviour, the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex.” ― Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male

“I don’t really understand it. Never have. The more I think on it the more it horrifies me. How can they look in the eyes of a man and make a slave of him and then quote the Bible?”
― Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels

Tip: In addition to not overusing modern slang, don’t use law language. A reader should be able to understand your work without resorting to looking ten-dollar words up in a dictionary.

Jumpstart: This is your main character’s wedding day. What could possibly go wrong? What happens?

Birthdays: Henry Rider Haggard (1856), Erich Maria Remarque (1898), Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906), Octavia E. Butler (1947), Dan Brown (1964), Jason Goodwin (1964), James Forman Jr. (1967), Kambri Crews (1971), David Rees (1972)

James Forman Jr. won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction

Quote: “It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men.” ― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

 “I don’t start writing until I have a very solid outline. Or else I’d get to the end and find out there is no ending, and that I just wasted three years of my life. The Da Vinci Code outline was a hundred pages.” – Dan Brown

Tip: Plot is what your story is about. There has to be something there for it to work.

Jumpstart: Your best friend has invented something that would change the world forever. What has s/he invented? Would it change the world for the better or the worse? What do you do?