Writing

Write the thing you wanna write. You can be strategic and whatever, you can and maybe even should try to figure out what people want to read and what publishers are willing to buy, but at the end of the day, a whole lot of people in and around this industry know almost nothing for certain.

Writing murder mysteries is largely a process of logistics, I think, ensuring that the timelines work and the right evidence gets in the right place at the right time. You essentially become the Jeff Bezos of killing dudes you just made up.

Some great advice from Chuck Wendig to start your new year. As a writer, everyone wants a piece of you. They treat the act of writing as an unserious endeavor, failing to see it as the result of the three corners of art, craft and work.

The truth is that I am just a very referential writer. And my problem is that I’ve got a very Catholic taste. There’s a hell of a lot of Bible stuff in there too.

So you’re getting ready to kick off a campaign for your gaming group? Before you even get started, ask yourself: are you looking to create a campaign that will simply be fun, or one that your players will be talking about for years to come?

I’ve posted a new short story in Ye Olde Fiction section. This one’s for anyone who’s felt alien, and trapped by the weight of their own feelings. It’s also a reminder that those feelings can have power, even if it manifests in unexpected ways.

There’s a new short story in ye olde fiction section. Well, I say, “new”. This is actually a couple years old, but it felt like a good time to share it.

Continuing my recurring feature where I publicly post a report card of fiction writing activity each month. This series is inspired by Aeryn Rudel’s blog Rejectomancy. Each month I’ll post a report card summarizing words written, submissions, rejections, and hopefully acceptances.

Last month, I announced a new recurring feature where I’ll publicly post a report card of fiction writing activity each month. This series is inspired by Aeryn Rudel’s blog Rejectomancy. Each month I’ll post my results, summarizing words written, submissions, rejections, and hopefully acceptances.

I’ve been writing a lot more lately, shifting my work from a secret passion to more of a serious pursuit. The last few months I’ve been making steady progress on project DARK CONDUIT, and producing short stories which I’ve been submitting to fiction markets.

I’ve written here before about one of my side projects, a suite of productivity tools for writers called Writer’s Ledger. The idea began from a desire to convert the spreadsheets I use for tracking manuscripts to a reusable web app.

Are you a fiction writer? Do you find yourself curious about how other writers work and track their progress? You are not alone. I am fascinated by the processes that people use to blend their creative work with the business of making art.

OMG, a workflow post! Apps, tools, productivity, oh my! Listen, we all know that no app can make you more productive by itself. Your methods are always more important than your tools.

Let’s face it. Things are bad right now. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, it’s hard to be happy about anything at the moment, unless you’re, I don’t know, a bridge troll, I guess?

This is the part of the job that doesn’t get talked about a lot, not least because it’s hard to talk about, but also because it doesn’t involve Productivity and Goals and The Magic Of Writering and The Grand Statement and all that good stuff in interviews.

I also suspect that we’ll see less fiction of all kinds. Everyone will have published their novel and discovered they aren’t going to get rich–or even noticed–by writing. The industry, especially in its middleclass form, ie traditional, paper-published litfic, saw peak remuneration in the 1990s and peak social status dividends in the first ten years of the new century.

A word count at rest will tend to stay at rest, and a word count in motion will tend to stay in motion. Word count = Motivation * Focus Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

People will advise you to write all sorts of sentences. Snappy sentences, lyrical sentences, Hemingway-esque short sentences, long Faulknerian sentences. But there’s really only one kind of sentence that actually works: a sentence that carries the reader forward from the previous sentence.

Chuck Wendig serves up a thoughtful and accurate critique of your current work in progress, which he has not read. While doing so, he highlights the key points of progression that should occur in a story.

I struggle with the notion of app-evangelizing. In the past, I was as guilty of it as anyone. I would proudly proclaim such-and-such as the ultimate app for something or other. Part of that is an aspect of nerdy fandom, and another large part of it was learned behavior from other online writers. However, I think we can all agree that such statements are disingenous and certainly not an accurate representation of any given market.