Writing related posts and advice.
Laser pistols, laser turrets, turbo lasers, laser bombs – Science Fiction is in love with lasers. I get it. They’re cooooool. They’re Space Opera. But lasers in hard SF? Don’t make me laugh.
Lasers, as anything other than a close-range weapon, are completely useless.
Here’s why: Read More
Have 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
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
TLDR: 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
There are times when you look at a book by your favorite writer and despair. That your writing stinks, and that you’ll never be that good. That there’s no point in continuing. You’ve been doing this for months, or years, or decades, and you’re still not good enough.
I feel you pain – but there’s an easy explanation. Read More
I have, at the time of this writing, received 829 rejections.
I’ve also sold 59 stories, most of them to pro-paying magazines, with another 9 out on submission right now.
If you crunch the numbers, you’ll see that I’m getting a 93,4% rejection rate. Which is actually quite good.
Let me explain. Read More
Yes, that’s Brandon Sanderson. Check out this interview with him on CBS:
This goes into the “inspiring” file: a 99-year-old veteran of the US Marine corps bought his first computer at age 95, and has now published a children’s book.
“Most of us have a bucket list that we never have time to do, until life presents us with spare time, and that is what happened to me.” – 99-year-old first-time author Sam Baker
English is my third language, and the one I most prefer to write in.
That’s because it’s the language that I’ve read the most in, and the one I’ve practiced writing in the most.
It wasn’t always like this. Read More
I talked to a neo-pro indie writer who soured on the whole experience, having paid $460 for editing, formatting, cover, keyword research, and a bunch of other stuff to get his book published.
In his view, he’d never make that money back. Which is quite true. But that’s not his problem.
His problem is that he overpaid. A LOT.
I published my first self-published novel in November. Total cost: $0.78 for two stock images. Read More