If you want to dive deep into the darkest crevices of a writer's mind, you should follow Irina. Many of her posts are long and thoughtful digressions on life and writing. She's better at explaining these sorts of things than I am. This one hit me so hard in the feels, I needed to reblog. … Continue reading REBLOG: The Impostor Syndrome
Richie Billing and I have finished another episode of our writing podcast, The Fantasy Writer's Toolshed. This episode should appeal to all writers, whether they are genre or literary authors. This time Richie and I discussed several of the so-called "writing rules." I think we managed to convey a good bit of writing wisdom amid … Continue reading FWTS Episode 6 – Writing Rules
Kit Campbell has released some great writing resources, and they are currently on sale. Check it out!
Sorry for the single post this week, squiders, but it’s for good reason! The first books for the Writers’ Motivation series are out! And despite the many technical issues, I also got my new SkillShare class up and published.
It’s been exhausting.
(I also finally bought boots for my costume. Hooray!)
But now I have lots of things to share!
Let’s do the SkillShare class first. This one is called Story Writing: Keeping Track of Your Story Ideas and is about setting up an idea storage system for writing ideas. It’s available here and is about 25 minutes long.
(I think I’m going to need to get a new camera before I film any more. Also apparently our local library has a recording studio you can rent out, so there’s something to ponder. But I’m not even going to look at the next class til December or, more realistically, January.)
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Here are a couple articles I came across in the past week which have some interesting things to say about short story writing...
There seems to be something going around these days. My various feeds--which feed me with flash stories and articles on writing--have bombarded me with posts recently on writing "rules." (I put that in quotes because ultimately writing rules don't exist. Writing is much akin to Fight Club, with the exception to the rule about talking … Continue reading Writing Rules
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch My rating: 3 of 5 stars DNF. I made it about two-thirds of the way through, but ultimately stopped reading this one about a month ago. It was the second time I stopped. I think, like with Stephen King's IT, I will not find the motivation to … Continue reading My Review of “The Lies of Locke Lamora”
It's been a while since I've listened to an ebook. Well, not a real ebook, a novel. I've spent the last couple of months listening to audio lectures on a range of subjects from the mythology of the ancient west (Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic), medieval history focused on important heroines (Joan of Arc), and currently … Continue reading Some Common Dialogue Problems
I saw this image come across my Facebook feed the other day and felt it would make a good little writing post. There were a lot of comments on the post, and even the ones that argued against fancy dialogue tags didn't seem to understand why that was an important rule. While it is important … Continue reading The Problems with Quirky Dialogue Tags
In his book, On Writing, Stephen King offers many tips on how to write good description. But in doing so, he reveals a fundamental problem with his style of writing--using words that have no inherent meaning. King does this a lot in IT. He references pop culture without describing the referents. He'll drop a song title … Continue reading When Your Description is Meaningless
If you've been following this blog as of late, you'll know that I've been saying for a couple weeks (few weeks?) that I will soon send out my next newsletter. This will conveniently hit about a three month mark, establishing it as a quarterly, which I think is a good fit for me. If you're … Continue reading Newsletter Delays
JM Williams 