Imagine this: a young man, disaffected with life and its thousand daily stings, channels that raw emotion into a work of imagination. He dreams up a world where all the little cruelties of modern life are given a concrete form, where hope becomes a personified, unstoppable force, and where the future is a shining jewel whose mysteries, good and ill ( Read more... )

So the other day, I wrote a story and even polished it up a little. Yay! And that’s when it occurred to me that in the last year of novel work, I have completely and totally lost all of my critiquing connections. Of course I still have my vaunted First Reader, and brother-man JED, to both of whom I am eternally grateful, but I used to frequent ( Read more... )

I must remember…

That I am a good writer.

That the stories are worth telling.

That plot holes can be plugged.

That loose ends can be tied.

That cardboard characters can be born anew.

That flat writing can be made to explode.

That I have all the time in the world to make my art perfect.

That perfection is worth waiting for.

I have established a general pattern for this book, it goes something like this: 1) writewritewrite 5 - 10,000 words. 2) Reach previously unthought-of plot development/scene that seems boring. 3) Ponderponderponder next scene for about a week. 4) Make major change to prior storyline without revising. 5) writewritewrite, rinse, repeat. Throw in the ( Read more... )

I must tell myself, it’s the end product that matters, it’s the end product that matters…

( Read more... )

Some recent blogs about blogging (I guess that makes them metablogs, which sounds like an awesome Transformers villain) caught my eye regarding how much one should or should not show of their WIP. Personally, I love reading blogs about people’s writing dilemmas and how they solve them, or their successes and how they were inspired to them, and I ( Read more... )

I have seen some posts about what writers do and do not do around the blogosphere lately. In general, I thoroughly enjoy craft/habits posts, as I love seeing what other writers do, learning how they work, and, of course, stealing the good stuff. But a number of things I've seen, particularly on one LJ community which shall remain nameless, have ( Read more... )

I’m going to take some time today to talk about writer’s writing problems, because I have them and I strongly suspect I’m not the only one. The community at large acknowledges writer’s block, etc., but the answer is universally, “well, you just sit down and write and all will be fine.” But I’m not convinced that’s all there is to it. Sometimes, I ( Read more... )