What I’ve Been Reading And How It Disproves Some Common Self-Pubbing Wisdom
(Damn, am I good at short and pithy titles or what?) Long story short, I live in a place that is not exactly conducive to either reading or writing. To somewhat mitigate the negative effect this has on my sanity, I’ve been spending a couple of afternoons a week at the library. Now, was my […]
In Defense of Non-Ordinary Characters
I’ve talked about this topic before, here, but it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot the past few weeks as I’ve binge watched several seasons of Doctor Who. The Doctor is, according to a lot of the sort of people who frequent rpg and writing forums, exactly the kind of character no one enjoys any more […]
Guess the genre of these stories
So, I recently read some writing advice about the importance of the first page — so roughly 200 to 250 words — in establishing “the writer’s contract with the reader”, i.e. telling the reader what the book is going to be about. I, as shouldn’t surprise anyone by now, thought this was completely stupid. I […]
Is This Seriously What Readers Care About?!
I found an blogpost full of blogpost suggestions for authors that are not only supposed to improve your novel (some in ways that seemed to me to be quite a stretch — like the writer of the post came up with the subject line and then had to make the content fit any which way she could), […]
People are weird
So, as I’m sure everyone know by now, yesterday (or early this morning) George R. R. Martin made an announcement which should have surprised exactly zero people familiar with his writing pace . . . namely that there still isn’t a release date for Winds of Winter. I am amazed that people are surprised by this, […]
I got bored
I’m bored; I haven’t blogged in a while; and I have a new story refusing to form into anything more than a vague concept. In the hopes of maybe getting a tiny grasp on one of the characters, I dove into my collection of character creation questionnaires. (I believe I’ve mentioned before that I collect […]
Some rambly thoughts on treating writing like any other job and the American work ethic
WARNING: I get political in this one. I’m not willing to argue politics, so if you’re of the opinion that the American work ethic is obviously the best thing in the universe, just stop reading here and save us both a headache, please? Also, I’m not willing to debate the existence of talent, or the […]
The Hardest Part of Writing A Novel . . .
. . . is coming up with fucking titles! Synopsis of story (as planned, details will, of course, change): Quinn is a middle-aged ladies’ man. Renata is one of his closest friends and occasional bedmate. He’s fallen in love with her. Not lust, not infatuation, love. He doesn’t want to admit this. He feels he’s too […]
Why my characters swear so damned much
(The title is the first way I thought of titling this post and was too perfect to not use.) I’d never really thought about how much swearing there is in my books until it was pointed out in a review. The review said that Lyndsey “likes to swear”. This struck me as an odd statement. I […]
“Aaaaugh! Stop saying the word!”
Today I was reading a review blog that I generally like, but used to like a lot more than I do now. There are various reasons for this, but the one that prompted this blogpost is that the blogger puts things like this: “The original text contains the use of the words “mad” and […]