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 →“Practice drafts” are my least favorite thing about writing. It took me years to admit I sometimes need them, and longer still to actually implement them in any useful way, and I don’t use them very often even now. But when I need them, they’re really useful.
Read more →Everyone agrees that writer’s block has something to do with not writing, but exactly what counts as writer’s block varies wildly. Some think writer’s block is anything at all that results in not-writing (including having a hangover or deciding they’d rather go to the beach today than
Read more →Once you’ve gotten started on your novel, you might think that all you have to do is repeat the process, writing a bit every day (or every Saturday morning, if that’s all the time you have), or lurching forward in huge chunks with gaps of a week
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 →Basically, I’m experiencing three different kinds of Stuck with the three main stories I’m working on.—E. Beck Summary of Stuckness: Stuck because you don’t want to work on this story right now. Stuck because there’s a major time jump/transition to get over. Stuck because you are unsure
Read more →Basically, I’m experiencing three different kinds of Stuck with the three main stories I’m working on.—E. Beck Summarizing the three types you described in last week’s comments: Stuck because you don’t want to work on this story right now. Stuck because there’s a major time jump/transition to
Read more →A couple of weeks back, Rachel asked this: I was wondering how you work with and extend story ideas without getting bored? Because I have a habit of writing or imagining “moments” that really interest me, certain people or situations that last a page or two, but
Read more →
