There is a Sir Terry Pratchett’s quote that is a part of my personal gospel: the first draft is just you telling the story. The gist is that we should not be self-critical about the first draft. We should blaze ahead with creative abandon rather than get in our own way at such an early…
After a friend reminded me that HBO had created a series based on Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, I picked up my copy of the book. When I first read it, close to its publishing date of 2014, I was reminded of The Stand. The idea of a flu killing most of the…
This week, I spent some quality time finalizing the order of events in my haunted amusement park novel. I’ve got 20 chapters planned, many are in their third draft. A few need to be written whole, probably up to about 20k more words to write, then edit. Knowing my final outline, progression and chapter layout…
I’m working my way through Ursula Le Guin’s Steering the Craft. In chapter 9, Indirect Narration, or What Tells, she warns against the info dump style of telling the reader about the world their are entering. If you’ve read fantasy or sci fi, you know what she’s referring to. That scene early in the book…
I’m writing this on November 29th, two days before the official end of this year’s NaNoWriMo writing marathon. And even though the month isn’t over, I can do a wrap-up post because I ‘won’ by hitting 50,000 words on November 20th. That’s the earliest I’ve ever won this challenge. I’ve got over 73 thousand words…
The first week isn’t even over and I can already report that this is more of a challenge than the last few have been. Not that I don’t have the time to write. And I’m making my word count quota every day. The challenge is in the content. And the approach. The topic is dating…
Here we are again in mid October with another NaNoWriMo rushing toward us. Last November, I started my Haunted Amusement Park story. I’ve been working on it since then and the story has gotten stronger, the characters and their motivations have gotten deeper and my sense of confidence about how it will be as a…
To view the recorded livestream of the reading/preview of the CC Vol 8 anthology. (this is a link to a Facebook page). Remember the story about the little kid playing in the sandbox? Well, I created a full short story based on that and submitted it to Creative Colloquy for their anthology Volume 8 and…
The world has not stopped going to shit. People have not stopped being mean to other people. Life has not magically become simpler and more manageable. And still, I need to write. I have projects, I have deadlines, I have goals and a vision of the future. There are days when my belief in that…
What if there was an alien language that humans felt in their bodies more than in their ear drums? And what if those feelings and interpretations were uncomfortable to humans? That’s what I’m playing with in my newest short story. This is one I’ve shared part of before, the one with the murderous toddler. I…