Monthly Archives: March 2011

Diana

March 30, 2011 – 6:34 am

Diana Wynne Jones died on Saturday. I heard the news on Monday morning, so I’ve had a day and a bit to absorb it before trying to write this. Which is probably a good thing; I’m not sure I’d have been able to do anything but wail if I’d tried to say anything right away. [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in General, Reading | Tagged , | Comments (17)

Is this a trick question?

March 27, 2011 – 6:05 am

My walking partner and I were talking the other day about the sorts of assumptions people make about books, and she said something that made me pause to think. I can’t give you the exact phrasing, but the basic sense of it was that literary and mainstream fiction is, as a general rule, a lot [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Comments (9)

…and taxes

March 23, 2011 – 6:45 am

April 15 is coming up fast, and for anyone who made money writing, it tends to be rather traumatic. No matter how much you set aside from your payments, it never seems to be enough (for those of us in the U.S., that 15% Social Security payment is a perennial killer). And of course they [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in General, Writing | Tagged , , , | Comments (8)

Fan mail from some flounder?

March 20, 2011 – 6:30 am

One of the things that happens when you write books that are marketed as Young Adult or childrens is, you get letters from kids who have been assigned to write them in class. It’s really obvious, for two reasons: first, the number of letters drops off markedly during the summer months, and second, the class [...]

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

The Towering Inferno meets Airport meets Meteor!

March 16, 2011 – 6:39 am

Disasters bring out the best in a lot of people. We see the pictures on TV or the web, and want to help; it’s a natural, human thing. Writers are human; we have those same reactions. We pull out our credit cards and donate to the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders and other organizations. [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in General, Writing | Tagged , | Comments (5)

Tools of the Trade, part 2

March 13, 2011 – 9:26 am

So I’m still poking through all the programs for writers. Storybook turned out to be another one that was more of a planner than a writing program, which shouldn’t have surprised me, since it bills itself as a writing organizer. If I wanted a separate one of these, I think I’d really like it. I [...]

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Tools of the trade

March 9, 2011 – 6:10 am

I have a confession to make: I love playing with writing programs. They’re a window into other writers’ working processes, something I find utterly fascinating and always have. Lately, I’ve had another reason for poking through what’s available: the latest and last version update to my favorite word-processor was over ten years ago, and I doubt [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Comments (10)

The Big Finish

March 6, 2011 – 6:41 am

 Nearly every piece of fiction has one main character and one central problem. Even when the story is told from multiple viewpoints with an ensemble cast, each of whom has a different important plotline, there is almost always one plot problem that is the problem that the reader wants to see solved, and one character [...]

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Limits

March 2, 2011 – 8:30 am

 ”When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less.” – Lewis Carroll One of the things I didn’t understand when I started writing was the pliability of words. Oh, I knew that the way I phrased things was [...]

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