Writing related posts and advice.
Apex managing editor Leslie Conner gives the basics of submitting to short story markets, including all the jargon. If you’re the least bit unsure about how to submit, or what, this is the thing to read. Read More
How do you write? Not now and then. Not because someone forces you to. How do you write, as often, and as productively, as you would like?
Fun, plain and simple.
Removing the “must” part from “I must write,” turning it into a simple “I write.”
For me, fun is what made that happen. No pressure, no self-recrimination, no “the world should be this way, and I should be that way with it.” Just plain fun. Read More
Some people are visual, others aural, and a minor portion kinesthetic. Meaning that we tend to learn and experience the world through sight, hearing, or feeling/moving. In order to reach them, we need to understand how to write in a way that touches all types of readers. Which Patricia C Wrede explains. Read More
So I’ve written a million words.
That’s 1 000 000 words.
It’s a big number. If I wrote a word per second, every second, without breaks for eating, sleeping, or watching Netflix, it would take me 11 days, 13 hours, and 35 minutes to write it.
If I did take breaks, it would take me 6 years. Which is what I did.
I’m going to tell you exactly how it went, what I earned, and where I got Kicked in the Shin by Life, Universe, and SFF legend Jay Lake’s Tub. Also, exactly how many rejections I’ve gotten.
Read on. Read More
For years I’ve been hearing other authors say that there is no great difference between their worst work, and their best work. I’ve always thought this was a load of crud.
Of course there is a difference between my best work and my worst work. When I do my best writing everything flows. It is pure, pristine, shoals of wonderful ideas that weave together into a complete whole. It is living in flow with the Muse looking over my shoulder. The words flow out of me in a never-ending stream.
Except that all of that really is a load of crud.
Last year, after reading Chris Fox’s “5000 Words An Hour,” I started keeping track of my work. When I start to write. Whether I’m writing or editing. How many words I achieve. And it’s really opened up my eyes. Read More
Work harder than everyone else. That’s Hugh Howey’s method. Work harder than everybody else. That’s the way to eliminate the need for being lucky. Work harder than everyone else. And if you’re ever in doubt, read this article for a gigantic shot of instant motivation.
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Not a note of caution before we begin: everyone has a different process, and what works for me, may not work for you. In fact, what works for me sometimes doesn’t work for me.
But I always think it’s fun to look at other people’s writing processes. So, here is mine. Read More
Fantasy writer Patricia C Wrede on how to train your first readers to give you the type of feedback that’s valuable to you. Really eye-opening if you haven’t thought about it before. Read More
I thought this might be a fun thing to do, to let you see exactly the process I use to write my blog.
Right now I’m walking outside, it’s about 10 degrees Celsius. There are nice weather, a little bit wet since it’s in the fall.
And I’m dictating this into my Voyager into my Plantronics Voyager 3200 headset.
Did you notice what just happened there? I said Voyager twice, because I missed a word. I’m not going to correct this in editing. All I’m going to do is clean up the punctuation and any spelling errors.
Everything else remains. So your
Everything else remains. So what you see here is the exact transcript of the exact words that I use. Read More
I’m working on a project right now. It’s a spaghetti western in space with magic, and I’ve come to a point where I have no idea where the project should be going.
On one hand, it could end.
There is enough for a cataclysmic showdown with everybody getting gunned down by the hero. That will make it rather short and I like the characters and setting. I’m not quite ready to leave them just yet. There is room for tidying up unfinished business.
But I have no idea how I’m going to do that. I’m pantsing it, writing in to the dark. I don’t know the world, I don’t know the hero, the opposition, the side characters. I’m inventing everything as I write. Read More