Category Archives: Writing

Writing related posts and advice.

05 Sep

Four Rules for New Writers

First: write.

That’s it. Write. You’ll need to learn a lot, but writing is a craft as much as an art – you’ll learn a ton by just writing.

Second: keep writing.

The most common “mistake” prospective writers do is giving up. Learning is difficult. It can be hard. There will be parts where you feel like everything you do is crap. It might even be crap. Read More →

06 Jun

Should You Give Up Writing?

Banner - penEver felt like you want to tell stories, but can’t? That you’re sitting down, starting something great, all those characters dancing in your mind, but two weeks and fourteen failed starts later, you have nothing to show for it?

Maybe you like the idea of writing, but you’re having trouble doing the work. Maybe you feel, or have heard, that writing is work, and it should feel like work, and you’re not liking that feeling.

Maybe it’s making you doubt whether you are a writer at all, or should be one, or should give it all up and try out for that competitive TV-watching team you’ve heard about.

No, you shouldn’t. Because you, and all those more-or-less well-meaning people on the internet, are looking at writing the wrong way. Read More →

25 Apr

BITS – The Curse and Bane of Creatives

Banner - Fountain PenHave you ever had a case of BITS? That’s “Big Important Thing Syndrome.”

That’s when we attach a lot of importance to something, which then brings with it all manner of strange and destructive critters, from plain fear to insidious perfectionism and delusions of grandeur. Which completely destroys our creative ability.

The solution? Do something that moves you forward that is completely NOT important. Read More →

20 Apr

Move Teardown: Lucy (Thriller-Superhero-Art flick)

This is a poster for the film Lucy. The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, EuropaCorp, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.TLDR: Lucy, a super-sexed girl-next-door, goes on the ultimate power fantasy, as justified by a 13-year-old boy’s rule-of-cool in a movie that fails due to motivational mismatch.

I don’t usually do this, but I’ll review a movie that didn’t work to show why. Also, because otherwise I’d have lost an hour of my life (I skimmed a lot through all the obvious parts).

Synopsis: Lucy is an exchange student in Taiwan, where she is tricked into delivering a case of drugs to a big drug lord. There, she is abused and cut open to become a drug mule with a bag of drugs hidden inside her abdomen.

So far, the movie is a standard thriller: Lucy is forced into a bad situation, the situation gets worse, and everything she does to stay alive and escape is completely inadequate. She’s running while tied to a wall (literally). If you can forgive the cross-cut hunting and lecture scenes, it’s actually a fairly standard setup with some nice cinematography.

But then things change. Read More →

18 Apr

Why Kickstarter is the Place to Be For Writers – and Why You’ll Profit From It!

Banner Piles of MoneyTLDR: The increasing popularity of Kickstarter is a death-knell for traditional publishing, but great news for writers, both new and established, who’ll get access to better-paying and faster publishing options.

People, especially new(ish) writers, keep complaining that Brandon Sanderson’s kickstarter is going to hurt writers, publishers, and book-loving aliens from Mars.

I’ve seen arguments that it will make publishers less willing to pay writers, less willing to gamble on new writers, and less willing to publish non-best-selling books.

That’s great news!

Check this: the big trad publishers are dying. Have been for the past 30 years, and it accelerated as online shopping accelerated. Read More →