It’s Sunday. I’m feeling sad, nostalgic, as I tend to do on Sundays (through strangely, haven’t in a long time…) I’m not stressed, which is a major change – I’ve been behind on work for going on two years, but I stopped accepting clients until I can catch up and things are starting to become manageable...
I spent the day at the Budapest Book Fair listening to Jonathan Franzen talk about birds and writing, and making jokes that nobody laughed at because they were waiting for the translation to come through their headphones. I jotted down a few pearls of wisdom that should be useful to writers everywhere. #1. Writing is an
I spent months working on my first novel. When I was halfway finished, I sent email queries to some literary agents, and got a few positive emails back and even a phone call based on my pitch. But the project festered, I couldn’t wrap it up, I didn’t know how to develop it. I
Gearing up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month?) Great! It’s a fun and challenging opportunity to be part of a huge community of writers learning how to complete 50,000 words in one month. If you’re stuck, or can’t seem to finish anything, or always put off writing your book, it’s a great experience. However...
I’m a couple days late posting this – just a reminder, it’s not a contest with prizes, but an event where participation helps improve your skills and may also boost your traffic and platform by giving you some visibility. And if I get enough quality short stories I’ll publish as a little anthology. Romance is
A while ago I shared one of these on Twitter and recommending printing it out and putting it near the desk; somebody asked “do you have a high-res version we can print?” I’m not sure who made the original, so I had it remade… You can share these smaller ones online or click the links
At the house we’re renting in Coeur d’Alene Idaho is a large collection of books, upon which I found a family of small volumes, well worn with by age and careful scrutiny, called The Best of the World’s Classics. One passage within is Alexander Pope’s comments on epic poetry, which I found may be useful in
A few years ago I read the YA series “Chronicles of Vladimir Tod” by Heather Brewer. While no JK Rowling, the books nevertheless have many eerie parallels to the magical world of Hogwarts – except that the secret society of magical people are vampires, not witches. I’m not accusing Brewer of plagiarism; she’s...
