The ideas I was talking about in the last post are seldom ready-to-write when they arrive. Even the ones that look ready to go often turn out not to be when one gets right down to it. I’ve talked before about the pre-writing story development, so this
Read more →“Where do you get your ideas?” Every writer I know is sick of being asked this question. Many writers have developed snappy non-answers: from a post office box in Schenectady, from a secret subscription service, from an idea-fairy who leaves them on the desk whenever I leave
Read more →Writing conferences are something that I think deserve their own post. There are quite a lot of them, and they are sufficiently dissimilar that one really shouldn’t just pick one at random to attend. Like everything else, each type works well for some things (and writers) and
Read more →I was at a book signing recently and admitted to the person in line behind me that I was about a quarter of the way through writing my book. I should note here, she is also a writer. She immediately asked me what writing conferences I had
Read more →My tax guy said I should create a business identity that the money will go to (if I ever sell a book) rather than just my name. I don’t know whether that means I have to sign the agent contract with my “business” name or not. Generally
Read more →We now reach the third leg of the professional-writing stool: Business. At first glance, this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the writing part of writing-as-a-profession. Business is all about the profession part, right? And logically, that means that writers who don’t care about “having
Read more →Craft, to me, is the skill part of writing, the part you can analyze and learn. It’s techniques, viewpoint, grammar, and style. It includes the mechanics of characterization, dialog, description, and action, as well as highly macro-level things like plot and pacing, worldbuilding, backstory, and characterization. It
Read more →Art is the first leg of the three-legged stool that is writing, and possibly the most difficult to talk about because it is abstract. All of the definitions I could find talk about expression, creativity, beauty, emotion, and imagination – all of which are ideas rather than
Read more →Writing fiction professionally is a three-legged stool. It’s an art. It’s a craft. It’s a business. Like all three-legged stools, it is most stable and comfortable when all three of the legs are the same length; that is, when each area receives an appropriate amount of attention.
Read more →Points of Departure is now for sale! As you can see, we have made the leap to a new host for the web site. There are still a few problems shaking out, so new posts may suffer from odd timing for a few weeks, but I am
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