I was interviewed last month for the Online Writing Workshop, where I am a Resident Editor.  At the end of the interview, they asked me: What one piece of advice would you give to anyone submitting to Strange Horizons?  This is what I said:

Send us work you love, the stories that really mean something to you. Stories that are exciting and surprising ( Read more... )

 
I tend to write long and cut out excess later.  So the rewrite on my draft is going exactly like this, only in reverse.

Mistress Mantchev has given me wise words of guidance: "To get that wriggling worm of writerly discontent out of your brain, you must tell the story."

To which I can only say:


( Read more... )

It's been a long time since I read John Gardner's On Becoming A Novelist, but I remember thrilling to his portrait of writing as a noble calling, a life of meaning and artistic purpose.  It was rich stuff: principled, passionate beliefs combined with a practical nuts-and-bolts approach to the technical craft.

And of course, I am still a complete ( Read more... )

Or actually, boy. Well, really boys. Because Benjamin Rosenbaum's story "The House Beyond Your Sky", published in Strange Horizons, is up for a Hugo award!  Hooray for Ben! This is the first time a Strange Horizons story has been a finalist on the Hugo ballot; it's an honor, and we're all very happy about it.

But I must cheer for boys-plural not ( Read more... )

I got a lot of writing done.  Not only the getting-done-ness of it, but also the learning/creating/bolstering a mode of writing: this is what I'd secretly hoped to get out of the week, and did.

Writer friends of mine often comment on how they can't imagine getting any writing done with a little kid around.  And I can easily fall into feeling the ( Read more... )

This is the time of year when I start to feel I need more to-do lists to keep track of my to-do lists.  Things are slipping through the cracks.

However, I am leaving tomorrow for a week of bunkering down in an undisclosed desert location, which makes it all okay. There will be good friends and writing and a hot tub.  Expect us to return

Adorable Ira Glass of "This American Life" talks about learning to tell stories (or really, to make anything):

Click to view

"It takes a while. It's normal to take a while, and you just have to fight your way through that. You will be fierce, you will be a warrior, and you will make things that aren't as good as you know in your heart you want them to be."

See ( Read more... )

For anyone who's looking into finding and dealing with literary agents: here's an informative post by Kristin Nelson.  Pub Rants is her blog of various "polite rants about queries, writers, and the publishing industry", and don't miss the sidebar, linking to other agents who blog.

I don't know how her perspective stacks up against other people's ( Read more... )

Hooray for Theodora Goss, whose Strange Horizons story "Pip and the Fairies" is on the final Nebula Award ballot!  This is the third story we've published that's made it onto the final ballot (the previous being Tim Pratt's "Little Gods" and Greg Van Eekhout's "In The Late December"), so we're extremely pleased and proud.

And congratulations to all ( Read more... )