I am sorry to have to let everyone know that Dorothy Heydt, a good friend and one of our regular author-contributors in the comments, has passed away. I don’t have much in the way of details, but Seanan McGuire, who is a close friend of the family,
Read more →Most writers get something “for free” – some part of writing that they don’t have to work at to get it to an acceptable level. Sometimes it’s something general: plot development, emotionally complex characterization, solid background, an intuitive grasp of story structure. Sometimes it’s something more narrowly
Read more →As some of you may be aware, the last year has involved a lot of expensive home repairs for me, mostly involving having to replace major appliances (furnace, water heater, air conditioner, computer, sewer line) plus minor repairs to several others. During one of my meetings with
Read more →Every writer I know is a voracious reader, and has been for a long, long time. Most of us are omnivorous as well as voracious – we not only read a lot, we read widely, from literary classics to pulp fiction, and from every genre available. Reading
Read more →“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” – Helmuth von Moltk People in general do not do things completely at random. There may not be much conscious, deliberate planning involved in stumbling out of bed in the morning and getting the coffee or tea started, but
Read more →One of the ways writers attempt to make themselves produce more words fast is to give themselves quotas and/or deadlines. “I will write 1,000 words/four pages/for three hours every day/week/month.” Most of the time, this doesn’t work terribly well for me, for several reasons. The most obvious
Read more →
