Happy Halloween!

I’m afraid I have no candy for you. Please don’t egg my website. Instead, here are my posts from the All Rights Reserved blog for the past few weeks:

* Writing fast - I’m a little obsessed with this topic.

* House of cards - Writing out of order feels fragile.

* Family - Happy 5 years and a few weeks anniversary, J.

* A Tale of Two ( Read more... )

I’m going to World Fantasy next weekend. I’ve been so busy that I’ve been avoiding thinking about it, but I looked at the program schedule today and now I’m starting to get excited. I went to one World Fantasy several years ago and spent most of my time at readings. That’s what I was planning to do, but there are many interesting looking panels.

( Read more... )

I’ve been trying to sleep more lately. And yes, this post belongs in the writing category, because when I get enough sleep, I (shockingly) think better and have more energy to write.

But it’s an interesting trade-off, isn’t it. Because sleep is one of the easiest things to cut back on. Which means that adding more sleep means cutting back on ( Read more... )

I’m doing National Novel Writing Month this year. (I.e., writing 50,000 words in November.) I’ve done it twice, both more than five years ago, and it was pretty easy both times-but I’ve never done anything with those books. That was part of what made me turn to outlining instead of writing without a plan.

So why do it again? Well, now that I’m ( Read more... )

One of the fun things about being a writer with a day job is deciding what to ignore when the day job gets busy. This week, since I need to sleep and I have a story due Saturday, it’s some exercise, the newspaper, and this blog post. See you next week.

Mirrored from Elizabeth Shack.

It’s the last Wednesday of the month, so here are my posts from the All Rights Reserved blog:

• Monologuing Characters - I try my voice at acting, and come up with an idea for a new writing exercise.
• Swimming - I discover that swimming makes my brain work just as well as running does.
• People at Cons - I discover that I have people to talk with at ( Read more... )

As of Tuesday night, I’ve received 99 short story rejections. Number 100 could come at any moment. Maybe by the time you read this.

Those rejections are for 17 different stories. That surprises me, because I didn’t think I’d written that many stories. (But now I see why I have such a big backlog of short stories to give to my crit group while they’ ( Read more... )

Step 1


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I feel kind of dorky saying this, but some months ago I put an item on my to do list (repeating daily) that is a few sentences for me to read. That means I start every day by checking my to do list and reading those sentences, which are a reminder to put writing first.

In particular they say that writing is more important than various other ( Read more... )

In which I tell you what I’ve been up to on the All Rights Reserved blog:

• Music and Writing - In which I muse about train rides
• Convention Bound - One down, two to go
• Shorts vs Novels - Spoiler: I like both
• Not a Rewriter - A response to Kelly’s post about rewriting. Shockingly, we disagree.

Other links of interest:

The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy ( Read more... )