“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits I’ve had several requests to talk about systems for writing fiction. The trouble is that a good, workable system is particular, even when it’s
Read more →Rather than do a long post this week, I’m going to send you all to a bunch of other web sites. Because it’s Banned Books Week in the U.S., and I don’t want to try to condense all this stuff into a single thousand-word essay. It’s too
Read more →E. Beck asked about tips on revising a manuscript with multiple problems Revising a manuscript is one of those things that most writers find either relatively easy, or almost impossible. It really depends on the writer…and on when and why the writer wants to fix the manuscript.
Read more →Mary Kuhner asked: When you’re writing a short intro for a query letter, how far into the plot do you normally go? It depends on the book and what the submission directions say. What the particular publisher says in their submission directions always trumps any and every
Read more →Once again it is open mike time! And back to school week, too. How has everyone’s end-of-summer been? What are you working on? What do you need or want to know?
Read more →First, I have to apologize for this being late. There was a huge thunderstorm Monday night that knocked out my power and internet, and while the power came back quickly, it screwed up my router, which meant lots of fiddling around, and I didn’t get everything put
Read more →Why do novels have chapters, and how do you figure out where to start or end them? Well, not all novels do have chapters ( see most of Terry Pratchett’s books and John M. Ford’s Growing Up Weightless for example). Most do, though, and have since the
Read more →Since before the Internet began, it seems, there’s been an ongoing argument about “plot-driven” stories vs. “character-driven” stories. By this time, there are a metric ton of how-to-write articles arguing that one is “better” than the other. And all those scare quotes are there because everybody in
Read more →I spent last weekend mostly at Mythcon 2024, the annual convention of the Mythopoeic Society. It’s held in a different place every year, and this year, that place was Minneapolis. We regularly have a multitude of SF-style conventions here (including, but not limited to, Fourth Street Fantasy,
Read more →Every time I talk to a new group of would-be writers, one of the inevitable questions is “How do you find time to write?” There is no good answer to this question, because there is never enough time to do everything—the things one must do (eat, sleep,
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