Things have been a little quiet around here. Let me see if I can explain why: I don’t want to imply that when you have a small human to take care of, you can’t get anything else done, but I (at least) tend to let non-essential systems atrophy. Navel-gazing (which, I will be honest, is [...]
Posts under ‘Resources’
Genre-Appropriate Ninjas
So awhile back (damned if I know exactly when), Amy Spalding (who’s one of the coolio authors Kate represents) muttered something about being stuck on a scene she was writing. I, feeling helpful, said, “Dude. Ninjas.” And she was like, “Wait, what?” And I was like, “Ninjas. They attack. Problem solved. The end. You’re welcome.” [...]
Midwestern Rules
All right, nanowrimo people: it’s that time again. The first five days were kind of wild and crazy — you didn’t really know what was going on in the story — the characters were sort of running around going “Look what I can do! No, me! Look!” and you let them have their head and [...]
Choose Your Doom
Bet you thought this was going to be a NaNoWriMo post. I mean… come on: Middle of the month? Ironic yet clever title? Something about conserving ammo, checking your exits, and knowing when to double tap your closest friends to maximize your own life expectancy? Clever analogies… OR ARE THEY? But no. Today, I don’t [...]
The Life of a Furtive Writer
You know what’s a funny sounding word, no matter what the context? Furtive. Furtive. Furrtive. FURTive. FURT. Heh. Yeah. I’m twelve. ANYWAY. Over on terribleminds, Chuck dropped some great advice on how he fights the distraction monkey of himself. As I mentioned yesterday, we are our own worst enemy when it comes to getting anything [...]
Your Own Worst Enemy
Early this month in the comments for “the Gazebo post”, I wrote: I’m definitely in the camp that believes you have to be the greatest defender of your time. Sometimes, you need to defend your time from yourself. I want to dig into this in a little more depth. “Time Management” is the sort of [...]
You Can Break Every Rule
There are a lot of rules when it comes to writing. Writers love to scribble down mandates like “don’t do this” or “always do this” and pretend that we’ve solved part of the vast jigsaw puzzle of creativity. But the thing is this: pretty much every one of those rules can be broken or ignored, [...]
Stuff that Helps that I used to Hate (#nanowrimo)
1. Write-ins I’ve never been a fan of meeting new people. That’s an odd thing for an undeniable extrovert to say, but it’s true: walking up to a crowd of unfamiliar faces that all turn toward you with a blank lack of recognition? Not my favorite activity ever. That reluctance kept me away from NaNoWriMo [...]
