I’m still learning when and how I can push myself into writing. I seem to have cycles, times when it’s easy to write and times when it’s very hard. (Hm. I just realized that I should be tracking this, to see if it matches up with anything else.) One difficulty – and I think I’ve [...]
It’s been an interesting week in publishing. I feel like I ought to say something about ebooks or discounted book prices. (For reference, three new ebook readers were announced this week, and big box stores have been in a low-price war over a few bestselling books.) But, really, there’s not much for me to say. [...]
There is an interesting contradiction that I’ve seen in myself and that I suspect is also true for many other writers, or artists of one sort or another. On the one hand is a rather inflated ego. I think this is probably necessary for most artists. I mean, really, you need some pretty high self-confidence [...]
I expect that every writer has certain tendencies they have to be on guard against. Things they instinctively do that they have to prevent, catch in the act, or fix later. One of my biggest problems is a desire to make everything okay. It’s the same desire you have as a reader. (At least most [...]
I realized a couple nights ago that I have a sagging middle. (Middle of the book. Sheesh, what did you think I meant?) I should have expected it. I dialed up everything in the beginning, so now what I had before doesn’t quite live up. Especially since one of the more exciting scenes won’t work [...]
I read an excellent post by the author Maggie Stiefvater titled The Giant Butt-Kicking How to Write a Novel Post. It boils down to this quote: “All of these questions are really one question: “How do I write a book?” And the answer, which I will explain in depth, is a simple two-parter: 1 – [...]
I’ve done pretty well in wordcounts this week, but not as good as I’d like. I’m having a hard time creating more writing time since I’ve been working late at the day-job. I plan to make up for it on the weekends, though. No reason I can’t get several thousand done then. I’m hitting the [...]
Many writer have rituals around where, when and how they do their writing. There is always the danger of becoming too attached to them, of course. If you have to sit in the blue chair with your coffee in the green mug in front of the poster of Hawaii (to remind you of what you [...]
Two years ago I had all sorts of assumptions about what I was capable of doing with my writing. I could never write more than a book a year, if I could even do that much. I couldn’t stick to an every day schedule, or hit certain word count goals. I couldn’t write action sequences. [...]
Argh. Not a good day so far. I got in 1188 words yesterday, though, which is great. But this morning I woke up so tired that I hit the snooze button longer than usual, got up late, then couldn’t face stringing words into sentences and caught up on Iran instead. I left my little USB [...]