OH, HENRY! by Deborah Elliott-Upton Ask readers why they remember the stories of O. Henry and it’s likely due to his surprise endings. It could also be that he wrote approximately 600 stories, publishing at least one a week during the ten year span while living in New York City until his death. As in […]

FUNNY by Deborah Elliott-Upton “When he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an affair or lying dead in the street, I always hope he’s dead.” —Judith Viorst I remember one magazine’s submission guidelines stating they would not accept any story in which the husband or wife was murdered by […]

TEACHER’S PET by Deborah Elliott-Upton As much as I hate saying goodbye to summer, I always welcomed going back to school, meeting new friends and reacquainting with the old ones. Notebooks ready to be filled and a sense of a fresh start inspired me. It still does. I thought about taking a class this semester […]

SUSPENDING BELIEF by Deborah Elliott-Upton According to my cyberspace network carrier, the Hot Searches today are for National Hurricane Center Olympics Bigfoot Angelina Jolie Food Network As a writer, I try to keep pace with what the world is thinking and especially what readers are thinking and reading about. Keeping track of those cruising the […]

DREAMS, FEARS AND LIFE IN GENERAL by Deborah Elliott-Upton “Perhaps life is just that . . . a dream and a fear.”—Joseph Conrad, Under Western Skies On the road again to head up a seminar in Oklahoma City, I allowed my mind to wander as it usually does while I’m driving. I imagine the unaltered […]

GIVING UP by Deborah Elliott-Upton In 1924, a book was published by Scribner with the title, How to Write Short Stories. The author was Ring Lardner and it wasn’t an instruction book at all, but a collection of his short stories. The preface stated the book was to provide “boys and gals who wants to […]

Each of the seven writers who regularly contribute to this web log writes on a deadline without any knowledge of what the others are writing about. Deborah was a little concerned that this column, which she had already written when Rob’s column appeared yesterday, might be deemed by our readers to be too similar to […]