A while back, I got a deceptively simple question with an apparently obvious answer, all of which turn out to be neither so simple nor so obvious as they at first seemed. The question was, in essence, “What parts of your writing career can you talk about
Read more →Last Friday, Minnesota Public Radio reran a series of round-table shows in which they asked groups of people from various professions – teacher, musician, entrepreneur, doctor – what six things they wish they had known when they were starting out in their profession. Most of the answers
Read more →Everybody has too much to do, always. You can tell, because half the time, the first thing people ask a writer is “When do you find time to write?” (the other half the time, the first thing is “Where do you get your ideas?” and the second
Read more →So LizV wants to know how to find critiquers in the first place, rightly noting that the last post I did has more to do with how you deal with them once you have them lined up. The short answer is, you ask people. The longer answer…
Read more →We’re coming down to the end of 2013. A lot of folks use the week between Christmas and New Years to “clean house” – that is, they take stock of where they are, clear up outstanding projects, and generally get ready to start the new year on
Read more →Once upon a time, long before I was ever published, I was talking with a friend about things we’d like to do someday, and I confessed that I wanted to write a novel, and even showed him a few chapters. The friend allowed as how he wanted
Read more →You are standing in a hallway at nine in the morning, facing a dining room/kitchen to the south. To the west are stairs up. To the north is an office. Your head feels rather fuzzy. >Go north You are standing in a cluttered office, full of paper,
Read more →As some of you already know, this is a rather busy weekend for me. I lost my elder cat, Nimue, to a combination of kidney failure, hyperthyroid, and general old age (she was 19) a couple of weeks back, and on Wednesday I acquired an 11 week
Read more →“How do you write with a day job/kids/other responsibilities?” is a question that doesn’t have an easy, one-size-fits-all answer, because, like so many other aspects of the writing process, exactly what works depends on the particular writer. But there are a few principles that can be applied.
Read more →Spring is always a busy time for YA authors and would-be authors. Teachers are trying to come up with ways of keeping middle-grade and younger students interested when the weather is turning nice, so they have students write to their favorite authors, and if they can swing
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