If you want to make a living in the arts, there are always two things you have to worry about: how to create the best art you can (whether it’s a physical product like a book or painting, or something more ephemeral like a live performance), and
Read more →Writer’s Block. There are a ton of different definitions of it, ranging from the exceedingly broad (“Any time you want to write but can’t for whatever reason” which technically includes sitting in the dentist’s chair or being at the store buying groceries) to the humorous (“Writer’s block
Read more →Tight-third-person is currently one of the most common choices for viewpoint, particularly in genre fiction. It has a lot of advantages. It’s very character-focused, almost as much as first-person. It allows for more narrative flexibility than first person. It makes it easy to switch viewpoints without confusing
Read more →When I’m between books, I frequently check out different writing systems, hoping I’ll find something that will make starting up the next book easier. Lately, I’ve run across quite a few “how to write a novel” systems that take a fractal approach to writing a novel. For
Read more →I think of plot as having several different kinds of layers. There’s “what happened” on an external, physical level (which is the action layer that most people think of first when talking about “the plot). But there’s also an emotional layer involving characters’ relationships and/or whatever personal
Read more →And it’s another open-mike day! Talk among yourselves, ask questions, update everyone on what’s going on in your life or with your WIP. I’m fleshing out maps and background timelines for my two possible WIPs (still haven’t decided on which to do yet, but I’m leaning toward
Read more →WARNING: A Facebook “fan page” for me has been hacked; we’re working on getting it fixed, but it is going to take time because I didn’t set the thing up myself. In the meantime, I’m told that scammers do this to try to get followers’ emails and
Read more →Years ago, “Have ninjas jump in through the window!” was the go-to suggestion for one of my then-crit-group members whenever a story’s pace slowed down, the writer was stuck, the characters were dithering about what to do next, the writer was dithering over which of six things
Read more →“It’s so hard to actually disregard advice that doesn’t work for you. The minute you start thinking about it, it’s ingrained in your head.” –Rose I decided I wanted to give a more detailed response to this than I gave in the comments two weeks ago, because
Read more →“Intuition” is generally defined as the ability to know or understand something by instinct, without conscious reasoning or analysis. It’s an important piece of the writing process for the vast majority of writers, no matter how analytical they normally are. How important, and in what way, depends
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