The 5 Most Useful Books I Read In 2011

January 11, 2012

January is the time to limber up your neck and swivel your head, looking both backward and forward. It wasn’t for no reason that the Romans named it for Janus, the god with two faces, who could manage this bi-directional perspective without risking whiplash. Today’s post and the next will follow Janus’ example, and it [...]

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A Fine Line Between Polish And Overkill: The First-Draft-To-Last Postscript

January 5, 2012

And you thought it was all over, along with Christmas, New Year’s, and Festivus’ dreaded “Airing of Grievances.” As the four-part “From The First Draft To The Last” series was winding to a close, reader Turenn, whose request kicked it all off in the first place, came back with a follow-up: “Is there another danger, [...]

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From The First Draft To The Last, Part 4

December 21, 2011

As we finally bring this behemoth in for a landing, I’m reminded of the old saying: “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.” What started as a request for a single post turned into … well, you can see how things mushroomed. Thanks again to Turenn for suggesting the topic. Be [...]

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From The First Draft To The Last, Part 3

December 13, 2011

Our journey until now… In Part 1, we started big and clumsy, with birthing a misshapen blob of story and getting its core parts in order. Part 2 covered the administrative tasks of internal logic, and the art of language and rhythm. Now we get into the skills that you can spend a lifetime refining. [...]

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From The First Draft To The Last, Part 2

December 7, 2011

First the bad news: If you thought we were going to be able to wind up this reader-request post today, it looks like we were both mistaken. The good news? Well, I should hope that the prospect of a Part 3 doesn’t make you peevish. To recap, Part 1 looked at the process of simply [...]

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From The First Draft To The Last, Part 1

December 1, 2011

And so it came to pass, this past Thanksgiving Day, that reader Turenn asked, “How about a post explaining what you do between your first draft of a story and your last? I would find it helpful, and I think a lot of other writers would, too.” How about two posts, then? Because (A) I [...]

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Bring The Lightning, With The Food Of The Gods You Probably Thought Was A Joke

November 22, 2011

Imagine, for a minute, that you’re in the middle of an expedition through some of the most remote and unforgiving country on the planet. Specifically, the Copper Canyons in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains. By late afternoon, under a pulverizing sun, you’re done in. You’re toast. Hungry, thirsty, barely able to put one foot in front [...]

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Go Farther, Faster, By Limiting Your View To Three Steps Ahead

November 12, 2011

[Cross-post with Storytellers Unplugged] “Begin with the end in mind…” Sound advice, that. Sound strategy. The rationale being that if you don’t know where you’re going, how in the name of Zeus can you be sure you’ll actually get there? Where, exactly? The end of an as-yet-unfinished novel comes to mind, for starters, but that’s [...]

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A Better Way Of Managing Your Author Website

November 7, 2011

From homicidal urges to gratitude — what a difference a month or two can make. Awhile back, this blog was hacked, defaced, and generally uglifed. My fault, most likely. I hadn’t updated the foundational software, WordPress, since I’d first installed it a year-and-a-half ago. This was just begging for trouble. There was probably a security [...]

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8 Ways To Be (Artistically) Out Of Step With The Times

October 9, 2011

[Cross-post with Storytellers Unplugged] There are a lot of places where I and everything else in sight don’t make for a comfortable fit. Where the drummer has one rhythm going and my feet twitch to some other cadence entirely. Most people will eventually cop to the same. Once we drop our pretenses, we’re all a [...]

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To Be, Or Not To Be, A Writer Of Short Fiction

September 16, 2011

It’s one of the more common dilemmas that beginning writers seem to wrestle with. I’ve heard the question enough: Should I work on short stories, or should I just jump headfirst into a novel? When it’s phrased like this, it implies that short fiction isn’t the endgame. If it were, there’s no quandary. Nobody sweats [...]

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We Now Return You To Our Irregularly Scheduled Blog

September 13, 2011

They say it happens to most bloggers sooner or later: their site gets hacked. As happened here. My apologies to you if you visited in the past week and found yourself looking at a pointless, chickenshit message slapped up by some gnat from a third-world pesthole. It took a few days to discover this. A [...]

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Sympathy For The Devils: How To Make Disagreeable Characters Agreeable

August 9, 2011

[Cross-post with Storytellers Unplugged] It happens to all of us: A work is rejected or critically thrashed on the grounds that the main character isn’t sympathetic enough. Maybe the entire disagreeable herd of them aren’t sympathetic enough. Of course it’s a highly subjective complaint, and maybe even misses the mark for what makes a work [...]

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The 5-Second Trick To Writing More Each Week

August 5, 2011

A year-and-a-half ago I ran face-first into the buzz-saw of my own semi-distant past. It was one of those moments that leaves you feeling as if you’ve morphed into some awful version of yourself you always dreaded. I did a blog post about it, “Scaling The Rat Hole,” and of course I recommend reading the [...]

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