being one with the keyboard?
writing can happen in one of two ways. you can wait until you’re inspired, until a flow overwhelms your mind and you are suddenly gripped with the words you want to put on the screen. which rarely happens. or you can grab the charging bovine by its metaphorical spurs and simply start. how to start is the subject of many courses, including quite a few of mine. the simple answer is you don’t write a story the way you write a letter, start to finish. you write it by analyzing its plot the way we do in literature courses before it ever exists. draw its points along a timeline and fill them in. then write those pieces and add words and sentences between them. i call this the spreadsheet approach to writing. does it work? well, yes. but you can see the results of this more-organized approach to writing here in my short stories and novels, academic articles and cultural commentaries.
poetry
poetry is what happens when words become beautiful.
close your eyes.
really.
just do it for a second.
poetry is what you dream but it’s quite a bit more than that. it’s actually what happens when instead of just telling a story you tell it with the specific purpose of making the words beautiful.
not the story.
it’s not about making things more beautiful.
it’s about making the telling perfect, an art.
and that’s what art is, after all, the pursuit of beauty in depiction rather than beauty of subject.
so poetry is what happens when you combine language and art.
language is our fundamental basis for becoming human.
art is the reason we have human society rather than simply human coexistence.
i consider poetry the highest of human experiences.
short stories
there is nothing more fun than sharing a moment, an image, a feeling with a friend. that is what short fiction is meant to be. a single scene, a single thought, a single experience. it may last seconds, hours, days. but it is readable in a single sitting, often in a matter of minutes. it should be enjoyable, beautiful, fun. some of these are from collections, others standalone. i often write these to commemorate events, much as i do with poetry. there are many more that are in the process of being added to this list over the next few months but i encourage you to enjoy what is here in the meantime.
academic writing
- Be You (2019)
- Seeking within the Self (2017)
- Typing Rubbish – Writing Without Thinking (2016)
- Talking Without Talking – A Postmortem for Traditional Communication (2015)
- Ignore Knowledge, Touch Lives – Teaching Today’s Youth (2015)
- Do, Think Later – Microethics for the Facebook Generation (2014)
- Throw Away Your Pen (and Write a Book) (2013)
- Thou Shalt Not Delete – Philosophy for Connected Culture (2013)
- Delete Yourself? – Life in a Web of Faceless Words (2012)
- Artificial Faces – Interpersonal Communication without the People (2012)
- Typing My Voice – Interfacing the Mind, Speaking the Hands (2011)
- How Not to Write (a Book) (2010)
- A Phoenix of Ice – Ethics for an Online Generation (2010)
- Writing Success, Creativity in the Classroom (2007)
- Thinking vs Doing – Teaching the Bored (2007)
- Beyond the Digital Grave – Physical Death and a Digital Life (2007)
creative writing
- Imaginary Truths (poetry, 2021)
- Afterlives’ Leaves (poetry, 2020)
- Mornings of Virgin Snow (poetry, 2019)
- Yesterday’s Dawns (poetry, 2019)
- Generation of Unrest (poetry, 2019)
- Millennial Ephemera (poetry, 2019)
- Out of the Ashes (linked poetry & short stories, 2013)
- Fires of the Soul (poetry, 2013)
- Fragments (linked poetry & short stories, 2012)
- Through the Hiding Glass (poetry & short stories, 2009)
- Liberties Stolen (poetry, 2009)
- Kate Untamed (fiction, 2009)
- Shocking Minds (poetry & short stories, 2008)
- Seeing the Air (poetry, 2008)
- Poetics Unseen (poetry & short stories, 2008)
- Unfocused Snapshots (thriller, 2007)
- Falling (poetry, 2007)
- Unconfessed (short stories, 2006)
ongoing writing projects
The works here are things that I am currently working on but, while I hope some day they will all be completed, it is a long list and much of it is related to my teaching practice — in the case of A Hundred Dark Tomorrows and Think, for example, these were begun as partial works to demonstrate planning and writing for long fiction courses and turned out well enough to hopefully become books of their own someday. I offer this list as a hopeful reminder to myself and my readers of things to come and to motivate myself to always be writing new work. The exceptions to that is my latest collection of poetry, Failure to Believe, which should be on bookstore shelves by fall 2023, and Visiting the Masters, which is intended for sale in summer 2023.
- Failure to Believe (poetry, 2019-)
- New Words (fiction, 2019-)
- Repression (fiction, 2019-)
- Questioning the Eyes (detective fiction, 2019-)
- Beginnings and Ends (historical fiction, 2019-)
- A Hundred Dark Tomorrows (post-apocalyptic fiction, linked short stories, 2019-)
- Letters (linked short stories, 2019-)
- Think (epistolary fiction, 2018-)
- Hate (fiction, 2018-)
- Visiting the Masters (poetry in translation, 2018-)
- Snow Dreams (linked poetry, 2018-)
- Unaccompanied Minor (experimental fiction, 2018-)
- Styx (linked short stories, 2018-)
- The Book Club (fiction, 2017-)
- Paint by Numbers (thriller, 2017-)
- Dreams (linked short stories, 2016-)
- Out of the Ashes (post-apocalyptic fiction, 2016-)
- Unthinkable (poetry, 2016-2017)
- Indivisible (linked poetry & short stories, 2015-2017)
- Genesis (historical fiction, 2015-)
- Elemental (fantasy, 2015-2016)
translation / thinking in words
I am currently engaged in two translation projects, one being the translation of classical Japanese poetry, mostly of what is now understood to be haiku, into contemporary English. This is an interpretational translation work using a liberal understanding of the art of translation to embody the emotional and cultural meaning of a work without undue focus to its choice of specific, historically-situated language. The second is an ongoing collection of Buddhist texts, primarily those of Japanese Zen scholar and founder of the Soto school of Buddhism in the thirteenth century, Eihei Dōgen. This project so far includes the publication of new translations of his works “Living into Existence” (original title, 現成公按) and “Sitting Amid Thought” (original title, 普勧坐禅儀) and various formal sutras from Japanese and Indian Buddhist practices, primarily to be used by contemporary English-speaking fellowships. These translations are accompanied by academic critical work on their content and contemporary adaptation for translation.
scriptural translation
I have also for a number of years been involved in the ongoing translation project of the Pali canon into contemporary English. This is a language that is highly stylized, repetitive and situated within a paradigm of memorization and formal elements (rhyme, syllabic segregation) that is often translated literally, leading to complexity of understanding for English readers and listeners. This project applies a more holistic focus to the translation rather than one of the word- or paragraph-level, as previous projects have generally adopted, leading to a more poetic and comprehensible (while somewhat less academic in some senses) translation that better reflects the original, while admittedly sacrificing much of its Pali-specific poetic and cultural norms. There is also an ongoing project of which I am a part to write a contemporary translation-adaptation of the standardized Shinto Norito (祝詞) for English audiences.
- Tasting the Lotus (contemporary translation of and commentary on Sutra on the White Lotus of the Sublime Dharma, 2019-, expected publication spring 2023)
- Kami in Life (contemporary translation of and commentary on a collection of Shinto prayer and ritual, 2019-, expected publication winter 2023)
- Living Wisdom (contemporary translation of and commentary on Dhammapada, 2018-, expected publication summer 2023)
- Ideas (editor, chant & scripture collection for Spring Waters Zen Sangha including work from Japanese, Pali and Sanskrit originals, 2016-, publication of 5th edition expected fall 2023)
rights
i retain copyright over this material but i believe that the pursuit of peacefulness through language and music is something that, to the extent possible, should be available to all people. i will make you somewhat of an agreement and it is up to you if you hold to the part that i propose for you but i do hope that you will.
to have the right words in your heart, your mind, your soul, that is to touch the earth with understanding.
all the material here is free to read, to listen to, to share. if you find happiness from any of what i have shared with you, i ask that you let me know, not so that i can provide you more material or send you promotional emails but so that i may know that in some way i have been successful in the only way that matters, to have connected with someone through their happiness. beyond that, i know that much of what is here is written for performance, be it music or public reading. i do not propose to charge you for the use of the material and i do not wish to restrict its use. i will not place watermarks or print restrictions on my music and poetry. all i ask is that you share with me where and when it is being performed and, if possible, send me a recording — not for public sharing, that is, simply for me to have the enjoyment that comes from knowing that my creative work is being shared into the world. you are under no obligation to follow these hopes but i do ask it of you.
if you never share yourself, what use is it to find yourself, be yourself, live as yourself?