Monthly Archives: August 2009

Getting Stuck

August 8, 2009 – 1:56 pm

I’ve been getting quite a few questions in the mailbag recently about writer’s block, and invariably they end with the anguished plea, “How do you know what happens next?”
Which is a lot of the problem right there, in my opinon. Because “What happens next?” and “What do I do next?” are among the most useless [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in Mailbag, Writing | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Moving along…knock wood.

August 6, 2009 – 9:07 pm

So Book 2 of Frontier Magic (Title To Come) seems to be getting some momentum up at last. Possibly because I finally have a bit of shape for this volume, which looks just a bit novel-like.
Part of the difficulty, it seems in retrospect, has been that I’ve only ever written three-related-standalone-novels, not a three-volume novel. [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Comments (11)

The Big Bad

August 2, 2009 – 10:32 am

One of the things you see a lot in fantasy stories is  a villain who is purely and simply evil and knows it.  No rationalizations, no semi-plausible rationales, not even a rotten childhood to blame it on, just the Dark Lord Who Wants To Take Over The World Because He Is Really, Really Evil. There are ways of [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Comments (14)