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 →Creativity is not a well-understood thing. Most people have no trouble recognizing its results, but they have a lot more trouble recognizing creativity in process…sometimes, even when it’s their own. People keep trying to break down the creative process into neat little boxes, in an attempt to
Read more →November is possibly the second-worst month in which to start a new novel. I’d peg December as the worst one, for the same reason: everyone is always extra busy and distracted during the end-of-year holidays. (These are also bad months for trying to finish a novel. In
Read more →Curious about people’s thoughts on natural length. Mine seems to be the novella (first work was 26k and second is just under 50k) which is awkward for doing anything with in traditional publishing (and I am not cut out for self publishing). –Rose What do you do
Read more →Over the years, I’ve noticed that at a lot of conventions, there’s a writing-advice panel with a title like “Picking Writing Tips and Tricks that Work for You.” They almost always end up going in one of two directions—either they turn into a list of the tips
Read more →Writing is a complicated balancing act. It’s not just a two-factor problem—this much dialog versus that much action. It’s dialog balanced against action balanced against description balanced against characterization; pacing vs. clarity vs. structure vs. depth; outlining vs. drafting vs. revising. The thing about complicated balancing acts
Read more →What sort of difficulties do you run into during the wrap-up? I would expect it to be smooth sailing since you tend to know when to stop. -NcT2 First off, there are two things going on after the story climax: validation and wrap-up. They can happen simultaneously,
Read more →“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas and only keep the good ones.” – Linus Pauling I love that quote—it applies to so many things besides ideas—but it begs the question: how can you tell which ones are the good
Read more →Whoever said “walk before you run” never spent much time with toddlers. Sure, toddlers start off trying to figure out balance and hanging on to coffee tables and couches in order to stay upright. But every last one of the ones I’ve met, once they let go
Read more →Finishing your first novel is a matter of lather, rinse, and repeat—you write a bunch of pages, pause to think and make up more, or do some suddenly-necessary research, or reassure yourself that you really did put that necessary information in some prior chapter, and then you
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