Every so often, someone asks me if I work on more than one book at a time. It’s a more complicated question than most people think it is, because there’s work, and then there’s work. Writing comes in phases. Very long phases, but phases nonetheless. There’s six
Read more →Back in grade school, when they taught us to write essays, the first step was always “decide on a topic,” and the second one was “make an outline/plan.” Nowadays there’s a lot more focus on creativity, i.e., writing fiction instead of essays. Based on what I’ve seen
Read more →There’s an analogy that’s been around for a long time – I’ve been using it myself for years – comparing writing a novel to a long-distance road trip, usually at night. The comparison goes, in the car, you can only see as far as the headlights light
Read more →In the two years and a bit that I’ve been producing this blog, I’ve developed a rule of thumb that goes “Any time three people ask me more or less the same question in the same week, it’s probably time to do a post on the topic.”
Read more →When would-be writers ask “where do you get your ideas?” they are often asking the wrong question. They’re struggling to get started on a story, but they’re not actually starting from scratch. They have an idea. It’s just not enough to go on with yet. So what these
Read more →“Where do you get your ideas?” is probably the most-asked question writers get, and one of the reasons writers hate getting it is because it can actually be fairly hard to answer. Oh, not if the person asking the question is a semi-interested reader who’s more interested in making
Read more →Lately, I’ve been getting anxious queries from a lot of close friends, who know a) exactly when my book deadline is, b) just how many other desperately important things I have going on to distract me from writing, and c) how many plot threads I still have
Read more →Fanfiction is a fascinating phenomenon. Yes, yes, I know that there’s still a huge argument going on between the people who think it’s all right to do and the people who consider it illegal, unethical, and unprofessional, but I think it’s a rather silly argument, on the
Read more →Disasters bring out the best in a lot of people. We see the pictures on TV or the web, and want to help; it’s a natural, human thing. Writers are human; we have those same reactions. We pull out our credit cards and donate to the Red
Read more →Teresa Nielsen Hayden, one of my many editor friends, once claimed that writers are like otters. Apparently, if you are trying to train animals, the normal method is to provide praise and rewards when they do something you would like them to do; the theory is that
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