Category Archives: Writing
Why I’m Saying No to NaNoWriMo
As most writerly folks know, today is the first day of NaNoWriMo where scribblers around the world pledge that they’ll get 50,000 words–any words–on the page by the end of the month. Each year when this event kicks off, I … Continue reading
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Thoughts on the Shitiness of First Drafts
I’m working on the first draft of a novel. I hate first drafts. Short stories are bad enough, but novels are much smaller boats set adrift on bigger seas. Many writers have commented at length on this process, but I’ll … Continue reading
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Sir Arthur Canon Doyle on Sherlock Holmes and Psychic Matters
I love the raw quality of this video. The audio alone makes it worth ten minutes from your day. Doyle has a wonderful raspy voice and is no slouch in the vocabulary department. He speaks of his inspiration for Sherlock … Continue reading
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Temptation Blocker
I’ve often thought of how much easier it must have been to write novels with quill pens, back before the internet and infinite distraction was only one click away. Hmmm… I wonder what the best way is to outrun a … Continue reading
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Ray Bradbury and Science Fiction Cave Paintings
In his essay “Dusk in the Robot Museums: The Rebirth of Imagination” from 1980, Ray Bradbury writes about the transition he saw in how science fiction was viewed during his lifetime. This essay, along with many other gems, is collected … Continue reading
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6 Rules for Writing Book Reviews
A couple of author blogs that I follow have had some great recent posts on the role of the book reviewer. First, Mark Charan Newton weighed in with a discussion on the value of hype. And then Sam Sykes on … Continue reading
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Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Short Story Writers
I first encountered Bagombo Snuff Box by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. when it was published a decade ago. It collects his short stories that didn’t make the cut for Welcome to the Monkey House. Most were originally published in magazines like Colliers … Continue reading
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Top 3 Things I Learned at SCBWI
It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than a week since the SCBWI conference ended. Though now that I’ve had a little time to digest all of it, I can whittle down the two-day conference into the top three … Continue reading
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SCBWI Conference This Weekend
I’ll be at the SCBWI conference this weekend, in Seattle (Redmond technically, but that’s getting a bit nitpicky). This is the third year that I’ve attended. Two years ago I went for inspiration and had yet to get back into … Continue reading
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What Not to Get for a Day Job
I accepted long ago that first novels don’t vanquish the day job. With average first advances coming in at $5,000, they’re financial successes if they pay the rent for a few months. But it still surprises me when I hear … Continue reading
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