DONALD J. BINGLE

Writers write for all sorts of reasons, but the general public always seems to want to create a simple dichotomy between writers who write for money and writers who write for the love of writing. Of course, then they generally sneer at the former and laugh at the latter. As with most things, all is not as simple as it might appear to those who glibly gloss over subjects, rather than giving them any serious thought. Even with minimal thought (I like to think I'm efficient, n

Did you ever notice that some buskers (street performers) bring a box or milk crate to stand on while they perform? They do that so that more people can see them. Some people may choose to pass by without watching. Heck, some people may turn away after the performance has started because they don't think the performance is worth their time. But if passersby never see the performer, there's almost no chance that they'll stop and watch and maybe drop a few coins or a bill in th

I'm a writer, but I confess I haven't written a book in a while. I've written a number of short stories recently and two novellas under pen names, but not a full-length book recently. (I'm working on a mystery thriller now, but I'm not absolutely positive it will end up long enough to be a book, rather than a longish novella. Since it is a speculative piece of work, rather than written to the specifications of a contract, I'm flexible on how long I make it.) Just so everyon

They say that recognizing that you have a problem is the first step in getting help. Screw that. I am a control freak and I like it that way. I see nothing wrong in trying to control the things that you can control. For example, when I travel by car, I prefer to be the one driving. It's not that I think other people are bad drivers, just that I'm more comfortable being a driver than being a passenger. (Since I'm a non-drinker, that makes me a handy designated driver, to

I'm not a big fan of writers writing for free or of the various websites, anthologies, and (mostly literary) magazines which expect writers to write for free. No, it's not that I need the money to eat and it's not like what most writers get paid to write short fiction (5 cents a word is considered pro rates, a payment which hasn't, I believe, changed much in the last fifty or more years) really amounts to that much. It just seems to be an odd thing to write for free or for pu

My wife and I used to go to a lot of local art fairs (before all of our available wall space was pretty well occupied). One of the things about artists is that many, many of them find a style or motif they do reasonably well and which sells well-enough to support the art fair circuit lifestyle and they stick with it. So we would see an artist tent and recognize it as the "fuzzy tree" guy or the "cows in the field" woman or whatever. Sure, we sometimes bought stuff from these