This post's purpose is to collect my common tags in one place, so readers (and I!) can easily access entries on several subjects.

Justine Larbalestier talks about finishing writing projects.

"My immediate response is that no book is ever "well and truly done." They could all be made better. Every single one of them, yes, even Pride and Prejudice. There is not point at which "you shouldn't tamper with a story anymore ( Read more... )

cookie_chef asked for some examples of the edits I've been making. This is what they look like ( Read more... )

These are my notes on the narrative panel at WisCon. Mostly, I didn't write down attributions, or try to make a sequence (or narrative!). This is just the bits that struck me, and that I wanted to refer to later. Also, there might be some of my own thoughts and interpretations, but not a lot ( Read more... )

500 words Friday night, 1000 on Saturday, and 1500 on Sunday. Not too bad. I'm also reading more bits of my research books, and I made some revisions to my scene list, and am taking Thursday and Friday off from the day job to write ( Read more... )

I achieved my thousand-word goal last night, so now I only have 95,000 words to go ( Read more... )

Net gain in wordcount yesterday was 2310 words. The material is fine; I am curious to see if any of it will show up in the revision letter, or need more line edits than other stuff, because I wrote so much faster ( Read more... )

When two chapters from the end of a novel? Which is due in about twelve days? Don't go reading a bunch of articles about how to write and make your book fabulous.

It will just make you crazy, and annoy the pig.

How do you describe your characters?

All at once, the first time we see them, or in dribs and drabs? Or never at all?

How specific are you? As specific as the story requires? On what elements do you tend to focus? (It changes every time is an acceptable answer ( Read more... )

Writing scenes is definitely the right idea to really, really get started on this novel; but so is research. I'd forgotten that when I was stuck on the previous project, I would often return to my research materials, which inevitably struck off some new idea or connection. So now I'm reading one of the books I had piled up, and it's proved to be ( Read more... )