I'm reading more than one book at the moment, which is pretty typical for me of late. Primarily because I'm not a fast reader, and my taste in fiction favors longer works more often than not, but also because my muse finds inspiration in a variety of genres and sources. It's an old saw, but you need to read if you want to write ( Read more... )

Normally, I'm reading several different books at the same time, and the genres can range from mystery to horror to straight literary fiction. Sometimes it's like juggling bowling balls and chain saws, since the writing styles are so different.

The benefit to tackling books like The Passage by Justin Cronin at the same time I'm reading The Pillars ( Read more... )

I'm still making progress on the book. Not as fast as I'd like, but that always seems to be the case. That I'm still making progress is the important point. Words make me happy these days. The characters and story continue to develop. They're donning complexities like clothes worn too long. Wrinkled and comfortable, all full of textures and ( Read more... )

Today's post touches on one of the reasons I enjoy writing: I get to learn stuff ( Read more... )

One of the things I struggle with as a writer is how to handle flashbacks.

Part of my difficulty is balancing how much to show about a character's past or past events that inform who they are now as a character. New writers are told to start a story by dropping readers in medias res. Yet, writers are told to limit how much they use flashbacks, ( Read more... )

I wanted to start today's post starts with a snippet from Sacrifices / Into Dust Descend, but nothing I wrote last night or this morning was simple enough for me to extract ( Read more... )

A while back, one of my friends, Elizabeth Bear, aka matociquala, started a community called Novel in 90 over on LiveJournal to help another writer get on task with a project. The goal was to write 3 pages a day for 90 days and complete ''a novel-length manuscript in a reasonable time, under real-life conditions ( Read more... )

Yesterday was a good day, and I credit Mad Men on AMC.

I had tried watching the show when it originally aired several years ago, but for one reason or another I missed a few episodes. While most television shows today air clips before an episode to catch up new viewers, the story arc on Mad Men (and most good television shows today) suffers from ( Read more... )

It seems appropriate, since I haven't blogged in several days, to write about time. The concept strikes me as one that's essential to a writer.

Writers can't make time, since there are only 24 hours in a day and they need to take time to work, sleep, socialize, and all the other sundry activities that comprise someone's life. So, I believe ( Read more... )

We worked this morning and early afternoon on reclaiming our basement. It flooded a couple of weeks back (probably more like a month) when the sump pump broke ( Read more... )