Spot the Wolf Spider & Sharpening My Mallet

Quick, spot the wolf spider!

It might be tricky, even with the image focused on the entrance to a burrow.

A shy wolf spider is living right outside. It's pretty big, as you can see. I've tried getting a few photos, but it's difficult to do without scaring it. Not only that, but it's really, really fast. Wolf spiders are considered "the cheetah of the spider world" and can move as fast as 2 feet (0.6 meters) per second.

Practically speaking, that means by the time I can focus a camera on its location, it's already jumped on the back of my head and pretending to be a hat. It's not a fan of my spider-paparazzi attempts, and it also keeps telling me that it has previous engagements whenever I try to invite it over for dinner.

Maybe next time, I'll just ask for an autograph.

What's New?

• Subtlety in fiction is strange. On film, it can be tackled with all sorts of tricks like lighting, colors, angles, a flash of an expression, a background, or a whole bunch of other things. Writing with subtlety requires other trickery. There's a fine line between providing subtle hints at a character's inner mind and bashing the reader over the head with an expository mallet. Subtlety is where my latest novel edits are focused. You might say that I'm sharpening my mallet. 🤔
• Next Week: An urban legend over fifty years old may have real roots.