Hello! I've stopped using LiveJournal, but here are the places where you can find me and my work.

• My website/blog
• My online school, The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers
• My social presence on Facebook, Instagram, Medium,  MeWe, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Twitter
• My Patreon campaign
• My RedBubble store

 I've been talking about writing over on the Wordpress blog (including some writing exercises so you can try stuff out), most recently on engaging the senses. I've also covered 5 good things to do in your first 3 paragraphs and why titles matter. Got strong opinions on any of these? Come on over and join the conversation.

I'm in the process of moving my blog over to my own site and will be publishing the posts from there on here but don't have that set up yet.

In the meantime, here's a pointer to two posts on there:

• Ten Books for Writers Focusing on Craft
• A snippet from the work in progress

One of the things I like about teaching is that it makes you think about the things you're trying to teach. In the first Writing F&SF class, I asked the class what makes a story a good one - how do we know it's good? Answers included a world so well constructed you can sense it; immersion in the text to the point you forget you're reading; ( Read more... )

I was looking over my story spreadsheet and thought I would share stats. I know some folks hit with the first market almost every time - alas, I am not one of those. Anyhow, here's the list:

Stories currently out to market for first time: 3
2nd time: 2
3rd time: 1
4th time: 6
5th time: 3
6th time: 3
7th time: 1
8th time: 2
9th time: 1
10th time: 1
11th time: ( Read more... )

Just transferred all the scribbling and notes and writing for Queen of the Fireflies into a Scrivener project. This should make tracking progress easier and I'm pretty happy with some of the chunks. Also spending this month working on the revision of Phat Fairy (thank you to the first readers, you were great).

Here is a slight teaser from the ( Read more... )

I kinda want to write a story for these folks since it's such a fun idea: http://jwschnarr.webs.com/submissions.htm

Every day, my best friend Leeloo complains about the cafeteria food. And she's not wrong. Everybody hates the cafeteria food. But she's just way too descriptive. It puts you off eating anything. I was trying to ignore her, fishing through my locker.

"...Babysnot soup, also known as "potato." More like the paste you used to eat in kindergarten. Are ( Read more... )

As always, what I say may not apply to your writing process. It may even be a direct contradiction of your experience. It does, however, apply to me.

I am the first to admit I'm a procrastinator. I piddle around, I answer e-mail, I sip from the firehose of Internet updates known as Facebook and Twitter, I go and poke the cats, I stare into the ( Read more... )

1) I tend to have characters flapping their arms too much.
2) I am overly fond of using the verb "chuckle" when referencing streams.
3) I have too many main characters named Lily or Mela. I know who I blame for the second of those.

What writerly tics do -you- have?