Author | Joseph L. Selby

Tag: rules

  • The Hardest Harder Part

    You’ll often hear that this or that is the hardest part of writing a book. Writing a good beginning. Writing a good first sentence. Writing the middle. Writing the end. Rewriting. Revising. Querying. Being rejected. The thing is there is no hardest part, just harder parts in relation to other parts at that moment. In…

    Read more

  • Testing Your Mettle

    One WIP at a time. There’s a reason I have that rule, a very important reason. When you’re writing your novel and things get hard, your imagination is your worst enemy. When people talk about ideas of how to get inspired, they’re ignoring a greater problem: only writing when you’re inspired. You need to be…

    Read more

  • Minimum Word Counts

    When I lived in St. Louis and began to finally put genuine effort to a career in writing, I began the Third World, an epic setting required of every major fantasy author. To that point, I did not read critically. I read what I enjoyed and read for enjoyment. I did not stop to ponder…

    Read more

  • Accept the Crapitude

    So, invoking rule 2a didn’t have an immediate impact. I chose to finished Bujold’s CRYOBURN1 before getting back to work for a few reasons which I may or may not enumerate below2. Anyway, this morning was technically a writing day, but I quickly realized that rule 2a was unnecessary. The writing was crap, but it…

    Read more

  • Beware the AYRTD Bird and Invoking Rule 2a

    This has been a reading week. I finished JULIET1. I’m almost half-way through CRYOBURN. I’ve finished the first disc of ARABIAN NIGHTS. I keep taking my Eee PC to work because I feel the need to write, but when I think of what to write next, it’s not clicking. I know what I need to…

    Read more

  • The Rules (and their Subclauses)

    1. One work in progress (WIP) at a time a. A work may be suspended to revise a draft of a previously completed manuscript or edit galleys of a manuscript being published b. A work may be abandoned if it is not salvageable and a new WIP begun i. If an abandoned WIP is resumed,…

    Read more