Ask the Author: Russell Bittner
Answered Questions (6)
Russell Bittner
It never occurs. Would-be publications do all the blocking I need.
Russell Bittner
Your hours are your own, and your only boss is you. Then, there's the "natural high" of creating something. With luck, it will at least be to YOUR satisfaction.
Russell Bittner
Read, read, read -- other people's stuff.
Then try to write.
Then edit, edit, edit -- your own stuff.
Then try to write.
Then edit, edit, edit -- your own stuff.
Russell Bittner
Just a Shakespearean sonnet and a couple or three children's stories.
Russell Bittner
I think about a problem (or problems), a person (or persons), a setting (or settings) -- then try to imagine a beginning, a middle and and end. (It's something Aristotle suggested several centuries ago ... i.e., hardly MY idea.)
If I can do all of that to my satisfaction, I then sit down to try to work it all out with paper and pen.
If I can do all of that to my satisfaction, I then sit down to try to work it all out with paper and pen.
Russell Bittner
My most recent publication is not a book, but a short story. It's titled "Widow Jane's Valentine," and it's a re-telling -- ever so slightly modified -- of an earlier publication, "Room to Rent."
The idea for the original publication came to me after I'd read somewhere that millions of women send themselves Valentine's Day cards every year. Why? Because no one else is sending them. I found unfathomable sadness in this fact.
The cover for this newer version came from a portion of a wall mural at the corner of Coffey Street (where I live) and Conover Street, here in Red Hook (Brooklyn). The artist, Esteban Del Valle, very kindly gave me permission to use it.
The idea for the original publication came to me after I'd read somewhere that millions of women send themselves Valentine's Day cards every year. Why? Because no one else is sending them. I found unfathomable sadness in this fact.
The cover for this newer version came from a portion of a wall mural at the corner of Coffey Street (where I live) and Conover Street, here in Red Hook (Brooklyn). The artist, Esteban Del Valle, very kindly gave me permission to use it.
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