I hate planning because, more often than not, my plans get upended by unforeseen circumstances. For example, … I plan to finish a painfully detailed and tedious project at work by week’s end only to find an error in my SQL query which means I will have to fix said […]
Some time ago I wrote about “letting go” of my earliest writings (you can read that post here). Just for the record, I still have most of those early writings, slowly rotting away on decades-old onion-skin typing paper. I will eventually let go of them, but only after I’ve scanned […]
I am not a classic hoarder. You don’t have to navigate through narrow alleyways of towering books, magazines and newspapers to find my bathroom, or my kitchen, or me. I do love books and have far more than I will ever read, and I keep them properly in bookcases (for […]
Sometimes I wait too long to write and then the thoughts, or the threads weaving together an essay, deteriorate from being left out in the rain. Nothing I write comes out of whole cloth, and weaving is long, laborious, sometimes tedious work. I know because for several years I literally […]
Originally posted on brainsnorts inc.:
When I took a graduate class called “Writing the Novel” a few years ago, I learned two very important things. First, if you tell a writer that her work in progress is a romance novel when she thinks she’s writing literary fiction, be prepared to…
Originally posted on …and then there was Sarah:
Writing a series is not as simple as just writing several books in a row. Nor is it as easy as taking one long story and breaking it into several parts. There are a lot of nuances to writing a series that…
Originally posted on Life Measured in Coffee Spoons:
As graduation season rolls around once again, the ratio of meaningful life reflections to “It’s Gonna Be May” Justin Timberlake memes scattered throughout my Newsfeed peeks at an astonishing 5:1. These personal progress reports, ranging from the 140-character tweet (respect) to the…
Originally posted on MOON IN GEMINI:
1. Character arcs are not 100% necessary. I’m going to get this out of the way first thing. This argument is made all the time, and there’s some truth to it. There are some very successful characters that never have a character arc. James…
In exchange for an honest review, Ms. Reyner provided me with a copy of her debut novel, Twelve Days–The Beginning. My intent in reviewing her book was mainly to provide feedback regarding a particular chapter that she had softened out of concern that detailed content might be too brutal. So […]
It’s been a week since I submitted my final word count to Camp NaNoWriMo and my brain still feels as empty as this great expanse of sky. I’ve written little since: mostly comments, an attempt at poetry during a downturn in my mood, and the ubiquitous note-keeping I do at […]
