One of the questions I get asked a lot is “how did you decide to be a writer?” And the short answer is, I didn’t. Oh, I’ve been writing since I started my first (unfinished, unpublishable) novel in seventh grade, but it was always about writing, not
Read more →There is no bad way to write a story. No editor cares how you wrote it. No editor, to my knowledge, has ever rejected a story on the grounds that the author did not have a plan, character sketches, maps, or time lines before writing the story.
Read more →Last Wednesday, I finished reviewing the copy-edit of Across the Great Barrier, which was my last chance to make any major changes to the book. I’ll get another look at it when the galleys/page proofs come, but barring some totally egregious error that’s slipped past every single
Read more →Back in 1947, in an essay titled “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction” (since reprinted several times), Robert Heinlein wrote five rules for people who want to become professional writers. They’ve been republished many times, and for the most part, they’re still good (I’ll get to that
Read more →Every saga has a beginning, and this one begins four weeks ago, when my editor sent me a three-page, single-spaced revisions e-mail and a copy of the ms. for what is now Across the Great Barrier that was full of comment balloons. It didn’t arrive. We didn’t realize this for
Read more →So the revisions request for Book 2 of the Frontier Magic trilogy have come in, and I’m head down for the next week and a half. After much emailing, the consensus is that, among many other things, it needs a title change. The editors felt that Circuit
Read more →The first thing you need to know about getting published is that the process is best described as interminably long stretches of boredom and anxiety, punctuated by moments of panic and frantic activity. And this applies to the whole process, not just the submission part. Most people
Read more →Last Saturday there was a meeting of the local Mythopoeic Society, at which they planned to discuss Thirteenth Child. They very kindly asked me to attend, and spent considerable time arranging to have the meeting on a date when I was sure I could make it. And I
Read more →People make time for the things they love. That is why I am always a bit skeptical at first when people tell me that they can’t write because they have a day job…especially when their day job is a relatively non-demanding 40 hours per week. People have
Read more →“Outline – 1) A line showing the shape or boundary of something; 2) A statement or summary of the chief facts about something; 3) A sketch containing lines but no shading” – Oxford American Dictionary If you want to be a professional novelist, odds are that sooner
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