The first half of January, I find, is often a fallow season. Everyone is recovering from the frantic pace of holiday season celebrations and reflecting upon the upcoming year. Even if you don’t believe in new year’s resolutions — and growing research demonstrates that only a tiny fraction of people who set new year resolutions […]
The Power of Short Stories Read More »
I talk about willpower a lot on this blog — mostly indirectly, because I think that willpower on its own will never give you the discipline you want to be as productive as you want. Willpower brings to mind the idea of white-knuckling your way through chores you don’t want to do. I think writing
Willpower for Writers…and More Read More »
This is Part 1 of an informal series about Pen Names. See Part 1 or Part 2 or Part 3 or Part 4. There are many authors who write under one pen name (only) for privacy reasons. That is not the question I am answering here today, for privacy and security are very good reasons for writing under a different name.
Should You Use Multiple Pen Names? Read More »
I was tickled pink when James Scott Bell, writing guru and suspense author, and also one of my professional heroes, wrote a post a few days ago, “What I Wish I’d Known When I Started Writing”. He starts the post with: Next year will be my 24th as a professional writer. So I knew I
I’ve mentioned more than a few times here and there how damaging it is to your impetus if you let yourself click away from your manuscript, for any reason at all. I just haven’t formalized the idea as a strategy for getting more words down until now. Interruptions are the bane of modern offices. There’s
Most writers procrastinate about writing because (most often) they don’t have a good enough handle on their story. Others doubt themselves and think their writing sucks, or fear success, and twitter away their time for those reasons. Then there are writers who have reached a point where they loathe writing. If you’ve never hated
What To Do When Writing Every Day Feels Like A Chore Read More »
If you’ve lost your get-up-and-go and loathe the idea of writing, you might be tempted to self-diagnose and decide you’re suffering from burnout. Alas, this might merely be yet another creative form of resistance. I’ve seen several group discussions lately, where “burnout” is tossed around casually, as a reason why writers don’t write. But
Is It Really Burnout? Read More »
In the Part 1 of this post we covered the brainstorming part of plotting, where you capture everything you know, then fill in the blanks, amalgamate, then drop all that information into your favourite story structure. In Part 2, we looked at making a scene out of the beats, and time saving hacks for organizing
In the last part of this post we covered the brainstorming part of plotting, where you capture everything you know, then fill in the blanks, amalgamate, then drop all that information into your favourite story structure. This post, we sort that amorphous blob of information into a well-developed story outline that will speed your writing
I’m halfway through a series on plotting that I will finish next week. In the meantime, I have spent some time trying to explain to a pair of authors who wanted to know more, exactly, how I use Microsoft Word and why I am such a fan of it (as opposed to Scrivener, et al). It
How to Maximize Microsoft Word – Hacks to Write Your Novels Faster Read More »
