February 1, 2012 – 6:56 am
People go into collaborations for different reasons…and each project, and each co-author, is a different situation. Sometimes, two or more writers collaborate because they came up with a brilliant idea in the bar at three in the morning…and next day, it still looks brilliant and fun. Sometimes, the collaboration springs out of something that began [...]
January 29, 2012 – 6:27 am
There is an old saying that goes something like: “You can have it fast, you can have it cheap, you can have it good. Pick any two.” Meaning that if you want it fast and cheap, it won’t be good; if you want it fast and good, it won’t be cheap; and if you want [...]
December 28, 2011 – 8:17 am
The holiday season is a time for parties, especially the sort of parties that people throw in order to introduce interesting friends and neighbors to other interesting friends and neighbors they haven’t met but might like. It’s a great way to meet interesting people, and the first thing most of them ask is, “So, what [...]
December 21, 2011 – 6:30 am
This summer, I got a new car. Well, new to me - it belonged to Dad for several years, until he decided that with Mom gone, he didn’t really need two cars and he liked the other one better.
Anyway, it’s a 2008 model, with lots of snazzy bells and whistles that I’ve never had on [...]
December 11, 2011 – 9:29 am
A while back, I was talking with a young writer who was bogged down in mid-novel. The conversation went something like this (with names and plot points changed to protect the guilty):
Writer: “I’m totally stuck. My characters are down in the ravine and I don’t know what happens next.”
Me: “Sounds familiar.”
Writer (despairing): “How do you [...]
October 12, 2011 – 6:30 am
Every so often, someone asks me if I work on more than one book at a time. It’s a more complicated question than most people think it is, because there’s work, and then there’s work.
Writing comes in phases. Very long phases, but phases nonetheless. There’s six months to a year of writing the first draft, [...]
September 4, 2011 – 6:38 am
Back in grade school, when they taught us to write essays, the first step was always “decide on a topic,” and the second one was “make an outline/plan.” Nowadays there’s a lot more focus on creativity, i.e., writing fiction instead of essays. Based on what I’ve seen in school visits and from talking with teachers [...]
August 14, 2011 – 6:37 am
There’s an analogy that’s been around for a long time – I’ve been using it myself for years – comparing writing a novel to a long-distance road trip, usually at night. The comparison goes, in the car, you can only see as far as the headlights light up, but you only need to see that [...]
In the two years and a bit that I’ve been producing this blog, I’ve developed a rule of thumb that goes “Any time three people ask me more or less the same question in the same week, it’s probably time to do a post on the topic.” Last weekend, as I said, I was at [...]
When would-be writers ask “where do you get your ideas?” they are often asking the wrong question. They’re struggling to get started on a story, but they’re not actually starting from scratch. They have an idea. It’s just not enough to go on with yet.
So what these folks really want and need to know isn’t where [...]