February 27, 2013 – 6:57 am
When all your friends are bookaholics, one of the things that inevitably happens is that they recommend books to you and to their other friends, frequently in glowing terms. Quite often, other members of your social group will read those books before you do, will also love them, and will second, third, and fourth the [...]
December 23, 2012 – 6:53 am
I’m going to be taking Wednesday off, as I have things to do on Christmas other than compose a blog post; therefore here is a slightly-early Christmas present for everybody. Alexandria and the Terrible, Horrible, No-good Very Bad Slush Pile (With apologies to Judith Viorst) I wake up with a hangover and miss the train [...]
Back in the day, one of the pieces of advice I got that drove me crazy was “you have to learn to read like a writer.” I didn’t know what that meant, and no one ever really explained it to me. Evidently it was one of those things that was so obvious that everyone but [...]
I spent last weekend at 4th Street Fantasy convention, which was one of the best I’ve been to in a long time. The only trouble with 4th Street is that almost every single minute, you were faced with, for instance, the choice between a fascinating conversation about folklore in the con suite, a fascinating conversation [...]
Last Sunday, I was having so much fun going through Mom’s old writing books that I promised a couple more posts on the subject…forgetting that I was going to be out of town until the end of Wiscon. So you’ll have to wait a week for me to talk about the changes in the way [...]
Every so often, someone puts out a “top ten must-read” list of books for people unfamiliar with fantasy. There’s nothing much wrong with a list of this nature, if you’re looking for good reading and your taste happens to march with that of the list-maker. Some time back (fifteen years ago?), I was asked to [...]
October 5, 2011 – 6:58 am
The problem with sequels is that the writing and publishing process gives readers too much time to think. Let me unpack that a little. It takes me one to two years to write a novel, and this is fairly typical of most of the professional writers I know. Yes, there are folks who work faster [...]
September 25, 2011 – 6:59 am
Some years back, a good friend of mine told me a story about her nine-year-old son, who came to her wanting to read a particular series of adult books that he’d heard his late-teenaged siblings talking about. The books in question were great adventure books, but they did contain several explicit mentions of sex – [...]
OK, I had a whole long blog post ready to go about non-traditional publishing, and then I looked at it and realized that I was just saying the same thing again: there are scams, it is a ton of work, you have to educate yourself, check Writer Beware and Editors and Preditors before you commit [...]
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. [...]
A few days ago, Beth my exercise buddy mentioned that she’d been rereading some of Connie Willis’ time-travel stories, and it inspired her to ask me a question: If you could go back in time to do historical research, what time and place would you pick? I mulled it over for a few days before [...]
Most people just read books. That is, they absorb the information, or enjoy the plot and characters, without thinking too much about how and why they work. It’s a lot like watching a play, or a magic show. It’s supposed to be relaxing, so sit back and enjoy. Reading like a writer is more like [...]
October 7, 2009 – 9:19 am
So I spent last week in bed with something that wasn’t quite the H1N1 thing but had ALL the nasty symptoms (reading between the lines of what my doctor told me, this means I can STILL CATCH the stupid flu and end up going through all this AGAIN). All better, but I’m now faced with catching [...]
September 27, 2009 – 8:28 am
Exactly what constitutes ”good writing” is a subjective judgment, and it can be extremely hard to separate from one’s personal taste – not the least because one is unlikely to read books one doesn’t like, and if one doesn’t read them, one can’t tell whether they’re “good writing” or not. Furthermore, there can be an enormous [...]
Spent a glorious weekend at Fourth Street Fantasycon, of which more anon, I hope. Now my car is busted AGAIN and I’m waiting for them to come and tow it to the garage to fix the ignition switch. And I think I should get my cat to the vet before I leave for Chicago, but I [...]