One of my co-workers has a daughter that wants to do NaNoWriMo. I told her I'd meet with her to write a few times a week. Tonight was our first session, hers to outline, mine to write. Good writing day today, 1200 words on a short story. Woot. I think getting out of the house two nights a week to write for a few hours will be awesome. A writing ( Read more... )

Interesting topic on John Scalzi's blog concerning YA vs. Adult SF/F.  Personally, I write YA because I loved reading when I was younger. Also, I think the coming-of-age years are great to explore in terms of character development. Do I write YA because I think it's "easier?" Hell, no. Writing's hard, no matter who you're writing for. From what I' ( Read more... )

 So last night I started a new short stoy and wrote almost 600 words. It started out as a rewrite of a story I'd already written but already it has more depth and the character has more angst. Love that. I want to keep it around 5000 words, though, so I gotta get into the action soon.

Submitted my short for Blue Kingdoms: Buxom Buccaneers the other ( Read more... )

 One of my girlfriends has a daughter that will turn eight in April. Apparently, the other day A. had to write a story for school. She wrote about a faery named Flower that had to fight Dr. Mad Scientist and his Evil Minions. The best part? When my girlfriend read it, A. said , "Don't worry, mommy. It's a rough draft. I'm going to fix it tomorrow ( Read more... )

 I understand the concept of plot-driven writing. Really. I do. Most of my stuff actually starts out plot-driven. However, when your main character walks into his hotel room to find a strange man hacking into his laptop computer, and the main character proceeds to have a pleasant conversation with the hacker, there's a problem. It's called ( Read more... )

Writing is such a strange beast. I'm working on a mundane SF short story to submit to Interzone, and I'm stuck. Normally I don't get stuck, at least not like this. So today during a walk to the bank (I have the day off) I started really thinking about the main character, Gabriel. More specifically, I thought about her taste in music. This is a ( Read more... )

 Today Ken and I dissassembled the raised garden, broke up the dirt, and burned some wood.  Yeah, I did it without sunscreen.  I'm such a dumbass.  For those of you who haven't seen me in the flesh, I'm fair-skinned.  Quite fair.  Northern-european-heritage fair.  And I never go outside for more than half an hour without seeking a bottle of SPF 45 ( Read more... )

Back to the old grind.  While it's good to be performing financially productive duties, I liked sitting at home and writing for big chunks of time.  Now it's back to cutting out an hour here and there during the evening.  Ah, well, such is life.  Tonight I will attempt to insert an exciting chapter into Stormy Weather that includes an angry ( Read more... )

Today I begin the deconstruction/reconstruction of Stormy Weather.  I've bounced ideas around with several readers and Ken, so I feel like I have a better idea about where I'm heading and what the villians are after.  August 1st looms, and this thing isn't going to write itself.

Last night after playing poker with the ladies I gave them a reading of ( Read more... )