Author | Joseph L. Selby

Tag: wip it

  • 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…

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  • I’d like a #3, super sized.

    LurkerWithout reads a billion books a month. This is why I value his feedback as a beta reader. He reads a book a day, so I consider him a measure of the purchasing public. He’s the target audience I’m aiming for, people who like to read fantasy. I have no delusions of being the author…

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  • Fried Ocher

    I was talking to Elizabeth Poole yesterday who had been absent for a week because she thought she deserved to vacation in another state rather than hang out and talk to me over IM. Silly girl. Anyway, she asked me for an update on JEHOVAH’S HITLIST. I didn’t have much to report. I had invoked…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • NaNoing My Problem

    When I finish revising a novel, I feel like the train from the climax of Back to the Future 3. Doc Brown threw in those special logs and now I’m going twice as fast as a normal train. Reall, that works for when I finish the novel the first time and when I revise it…

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  • The Satisfaction of Success

    I am a success! What? Did I get an agent? No. Did I get an offer of publication from a major publishing house? No. Did I get a date with Rosario Dawson? No. Yet I am still a success. I have not accomplished any of the above professional goals (and if I never accomplish that…

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  • The Importance of a Name

    THE TRIAD SOCIETY is a pre-steam punk fantasy. What does that mean? That means steam technology is in its early advances. I don’t have airships or the like. I have steam-infused water and other similar “inventions!” Reliarach is the first kingdom on the Crescent Sea to develop such technology, the other six kingdoms being in…

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  • Trading at $1,365.00 an ounce

    A good beta reader is worth his or her weight in gold. As of closing October 13, 2010, gold traded at $1,365 an ounce. An ounce is equal to 1/16 of a pound. (2.2 pounds equals 1 kilogram for you metric folks.) Assuming Elizabeth Poole weighs about 110 pounds (when she’s soaking wet maybe), that…

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  • A Ponderance: How to Steal from the Greeks

    You may have noticed Nate Wilson appearing here and there in the comments section. He’s a good bean. He’s a bean you’d use in your award-winning chili. He has his own blog. If you have not read it, you should. The footnotes alone make it worthwhile. Recently, he posted an explanation of why the blog…

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