Monthly Archives: July 2009

Check your assumptions…at the door.

July 28, 2009 – 3:22 pm

Every so often, I have an encounter with readers (usually academics, but sometimes not) who are happy to tell me, in detail and at great length, all the reasons why I wrote something, or wrote it in this or that particular way. (Usually because they object to the reasons they’ve come up with…but I digress.)
And [...]

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Better or not?

July 25, 2009 – 4:16 pm

One of the plagues of beginning writers is the feeling that they are doing something “wrong.”  Not wrong in the sense of technique - messing up viewpoint, for instance - but that they have made, are making, or will make, a wrong decision about “what happens next.”  They are haunted by the fear that it [...]

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Characters…Can’t Live With ‘em, Can’t Live Without ‘em

July 22, 2009 – 8:15 am

The new book (Frontier Magic, Book 2, Title To Come) is progressing slowly. Partly because of the perversity of the characters.
First, one of my important-but-offstage-for-a-while characters decided to be stingy about writing letters. With some reason, I admit, but if I can’t get him started corresponding again, there’s a whole great wodge of  planned-for plot [...]

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But what does it look like? (A bit about description)

July 19, 2009 – 9:28 am

Description is one of those love-it-or-hate-it things. Some readers want more, more, more; they want to see every button and bead on the dress, every scratch on the woodwork. Other people roll their eyes and complain about slowing down the story when they run across long passages of descriptive infodump. Still others want to have [...]

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Home from the ALA

July 14, 2009 – 9:08 pm

The day I spent at the American Library Association convention was long and intense, full of talking to exceedingly intelligent librarians. How I know they were exceedingly intelligent is this: I do not normally talk in my sleep, but the night after the convention, I woke myself up out of a sound slumber by saying [...]

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The Naming of Names

July 8, 2009 – 7:28 pm

One of the perennial questions I get from people, especially those who want to be writers, is “how do you come up with the names?”-meaning, usually, the “weird fantasy names” in settings that bear no resemblance to the “real world,” rather than the more ordinary names like James and Cecelia I use in other books. [...]

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A few words on pacing and structure

July 6, 2009 – 7:56 am

 The “different panel” at 4th Street this year was on pacing and structure. I’ve been pondering it since then, and this is what I think (or part of it, anyway):
Pacing is how fast it feels like things happen.  Not how fast they actually do happen; what it feels like to the reader-this is why sometimes the cure for [...]

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