And no, surprisingly enough, this is not about the number of board games and computer games and Playstation2 games that I have gotten rid of. I was thinking of it more from the movie War Games, only there's not actually going to be "global thermonuclear warfare" involved in this post. I hope ( Read more... )

If you are anything like me, I pity you you begin nearly any new venture by researching your topic and reading up on it. Which is largely what I did last week, and I am still in the process of synthesizing what I've read and formulating my own plan, which I will undoubtedly foist upon share with you down the road.

About DownsizingBut first, a bit ( Read more... )

As many of you know, I conduct interviews here from time to time. And a few weeks back in a comment somewhere along the line, Jenn Hubbard (writerjenn) suggested that I do a post sometime on how I do my interviews. Now, I'd love to get all mysterious on you and assure you that it's magic, but the truth is far more tedious and, well, less mystical than that ( Read more... )

Once you've learned all you can about what revisions are needed from examining your book dummy, you need to go ahead and actully do the revising/rewriting. I'll be using the categories I made up for yesterday's post here, so you can see how they tie together.

If your full story isn't thereWell, you have to write the rest/missing part, don't you? ( Read more... )

There are folks who think picture books are easy. There are even folks who write for children who think that picture books are easy. And really, I'm part of the camp that thinks they aren't terribly, terribly hard. But they are not easy. They are work ( Read more... )

As I was checking the clock every 45 minutes last night when I should have been sleeping, I got to thinking how much writing and cooking have in common. And no, this isn't simply related to my post about how lessons from Top Chef apply to writing, either ( Read more... )

At least, I'm calling it cultural detail. I'm not certain that's quite the appropriate term, but I just spent most of the day herding eighth-graders, so forgive me if I'm a bit fried.

Initially, I was going to title the post "some thoughts on writing historical fiction", but really, it's not limited to writing things set in the past. It also ( Read more... )

The lovely and talented Pamela Ross writerross recently attended a conference for adult writers -- that'd be folks who write for putative grown-ups, rather than those of us who write for more discerning readers. One of the issues that came up repeatedly was the need for writers to have a platform.The concept of a platform is something I know about from my ( Read more... )