Welcome to 2025! Lots of people do New Year’s resolutions, or come up with annual goals, or set intentions, or do some similar type of life planning at this point in the year. And apparently “write a novel” is on a lot of those lists of goals.
Read more →Even in a novel that has a prologue, the writer will, at some point, need to get more context into the story somehow. (Most novels don’t need a prologue–see last week’s post–and those that do, don’t need the twenty-plus pages that would give the reader everything they might
Read more →Context is important. It’s not the only thing that is important in a story, though, and sometimes it isn’t as important as writers think it is. Getting the context into the story is a perennial writing difficulty. There are two main solutions: working the context into the
Read more →The holiday season is now officially in full swing. Around here, it starts slowly, a bit before Halloween, then ramps up gradually until just before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving week is a steep climb full of preparations for either going somewhere to celebrate or hosting a celebration, and after
Read more →A long time ago, I attended a workshop in which the presenter asked us to write a one-page description of our ideal day. I couldn’t do it. I don’t have one “ideal” day that I’d be happy to repeat over and over—no matter how good a day
Read more →A few years ago, I was talking to a businessperson at a family gathering, and I made a comment about my then-current work in process. He immediately assumed that my “project” (writing a book) would be “done” once the book was published and on the shelves for
Read more →One of the most difficult things I have to do, as a novelist, is to come up with a short version of the book. This is, in large part, because I am a novelist—I have a hard time saying anything in less than 80,000 words—but that’s not
Read more →Happy almost-Halloween! For those of you who are going to be in Minneapolis between January 17 and February 2, 2025, I have an announcement—The Phoenix Theater (https://www.phoenixtheatermpls.org/) here is doing a production of Dealing with Dragons during that time. Tickets available at the link above. I love
Read more →One of the perennial questions every professional writer gets is, “How do you find time to write?” One of the common answers to that question is, “You don’t find time. You make time. People can always make time for what they love to do.” Followed by a
Read more →It is once again time for an open mike day! Tell us how your life is going, grumble about your work, brag about your successes, ask questions, whatever you want.
Read more →
