Never Forget That Writers Are Insane: Five Things I've Learned from Reading Slush

I'm always looking for name generators that give me the kind of results I want, so when I discovered Generator Land this morning, I went and made my own name generators that will offer the kind of quirky results I'm talking about. It's a mix of fairly normal and fairly weird names, and you get a first, middle, and last name in each result. Here you ( Read more... )

It's time to start writing 1,000 words a day again. My productivity faltered over the winter, so I want to get moving. The last time I set this goal was for a challenge involving other people, and it was for 70 days, including weekends. For my own self, I want to write on weekdays and take weekends off. I think that'll be a sanity-supporting move. ( Read more... )

In the comments after my last post, On Writing Long When Attempting to Write Short, rachel_swirsky wrote:

Posting generic grumble/grump about how "too much description" and "too much wordiness" are often dependent on style and aesthetic, and while it's good that some people are (edited) Carver and Hemingway, one is glad that some people are Flannery O'Conner, ( Read more... )

One of the hardest things, in writing fiction, is deciding what to leave in a story and what to take out. I'm here to say that this is a skill that a writer can learn, and I have some suggestions about how to learn it.

I read a lot of fiction submissions for Clarkesworld Magazine. Several submissions a day, so on a normal week I read about ( Read more... )

Over the last weekend of August, I went to one of my can't-miss conventions, Context, in Columbus, Ohio. Some of the friendliest, most interesting people I know are there every year, and I have more fun every time I go. This time I picked up some exciting work, too! I'll post more about that when the details are sorted ( Read more... )

Today I read my 400th submission for Clarkesworld Magazine. That's since September 20th, 2008, and with four other people reading incoming slush; we were even closed to submissions from December 1st through January 15th. So that's what, three months' worth of reading, and only one person's part of it? We get a lot of stories! As you may imagine ( Read more... )

For the last month I've been reading slush* for Clarkesworld Magazine. Clarkesworld gets a lot of submissions, so there are four slush readers, and all four of us started when submissions re-opened on September 20th ( Read more... )

Despite procrastination yesterday, I wrote my 1,000 words in time to draw for a couple of hours before I had to go out, so that was a success. After I post this, I'll do it again ( Read more... )

1. (+) I must add my passionate testimonial to the cacophany of Whedon love: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. See it, know it, adore it. Go for the Neil Patrick Harris and stay for the Nathan Fillion. The three episodes will be free online through tomorrow. Don't miss out! Don't blame me if you skip it and regret it later ( Read more... )