Tag: writing
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The Drawl
I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been struggling on voice with JEHOVAH’S HITLIST. It’s not so much struggling as I can’t find it. It’s struggling in that I keep changing my mind, so the narrative text is horribly inconsistent. Here’s where I’ve been flipping. Take a nice classic rural drawl. Change of to a, drop the…
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Grooving
Things on JEHOVAH’S HITLIST slowed down for a couple weeks. It occurred to me that I was fast approaching maximum word count and the pacing was too slow. I also was bored as a writer, which means I’ll probably be bored as a reader. I pushed through what I had and sped things up. That…
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Stranger in a Strange Land
It’s a fair bet most of your writer friends aren’t your real-world friends. They’re online. The internet has been a terrific tool for us to gather and discuss and be. You may have been trapped previously with those that said they wanted to write, but whose offerings amounted to nothing more than literary masturbation, taking…
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Wind Sprint: WHAT’S BEHIND THE CROOKED DOOR?
This story began as a ponderance. I thought of it from time to time. It sat in my brain like a seed. Will it sprout or will it just lay there? It sprouted a little, but I doubted enough to make a story out of it. My wife then asked me what I was talking…
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Wind Sprint: THE SEVENTH SACRIFICE
I’m not keen on giving up on a manuscript, but sometimes a thing is broke so bad it can’t be fixed1. THE SEVENTH SACRIFICE was a manuscript I abandoned because it was all wrong. There were a few chapters I enjoyed (the introductions of the tinkers), but it boiled down to Cheshire getting off his…
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Wind Sprints
I wrote the first draft of THE TRIAD SOCIETY. I didn’t like it. It wasn’t bad necessarily. It just wasn’t the story I set out to write. The story I had planned was this huge intricate intrigue that spanned the politics of the university, the city, the kingdom! And in the end, a meeting made…
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Stuart Greenman has the right of it
Livia Blackburne tipped me off to Stuart Greenman’s entry into the Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. In one sentence (and pay attention, it really is one sentence), Stuart Greenman shows everything that drives me nuts about fantasy: A quest is not to be undertaken lightly–or at all!–pondered Hlothgar of the Western Boglands, son of Glothar, nephew…
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Don’t Make the Pimp Hand Angry
A proposal: Stop being passionate about your writing. Writing is not dating. You are not trying to find a spouse or get to third base with your manuscript. You may find yourself enthusiastic about a project, passionate or even obsessed, but those feelings will fade over time, much like when you were dating in high…
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Sticking It to the Predators
I want to query known predator agents so they’ll request my work. They’ll tell me they charge a reading fee because they’re so busy. I’ll respond that I charge a writing fee because I’m so busy. I will gladly pay their reading fee if they pay my writing fee. Bitches.