Creating Aliens
by Deborah Walker
I’ve written a fair few aliens since reading it, always thinking about that advice, but with an added aspect: stealing blatantly from Mother Nature.
Archive for the ‘The Craft of Writing’ Category
How I Remain Productive While Traveling
by Jennifer Brozek When I first attended conventions or traveled for the holidays, my freelance work suffered. Not just during the event but for the few days before and after the event as well. I knew this and scheduled for it. This worked for me for a while. However, as my writing and editing project deadlines […]
Speaking With Authority About Things That (Probably) Do Not Exist
by Jeremiah Tolbert
I once sat beside a campfire in Washington and listened to a man with a pistol strapped to his waist lecture for an hour about the ecology and habits of the Sasquatch. Meanwhile, my companions–a college professor and two high school teachers–had taken up buckets in a circle around our camp and were drumming to attract the great skunk ape into our midst.
Building Strength out of Weakness
by Nancy Fulda
My oldest sister is very wise. Once, long ago, when I was struggling to master a difficult situation, she sent me a letter about strength and weakness. The gist of the content was this: Many strengths are the flip side of weakness.
2014 Online Odyssey Writing Workshops Announced
From the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust: This winter, the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust is offering three live online courses with the same high quality and rigorous approach as its acclaimed, in-person Odyssey workshop: Showing versus Telling in Fantastic Fiction, One Brick at a Time: Crafting Compelling Scenes, and Effective Endings in Speculative Fiction. […]
Guest Post: On Writing: Can You Do It Wrong?
by Cat Rambo
Are you putting words on the page? Then you are doing it right.
You may not be creating publishable words. You may not be creating amazing words. You may not be creating words you like. But by creating words, you are doing something actual, tangible, verifiable. And that puts you ahead of all the people who aren’t writing.
Variations of Villainy
by Nancy Fulda
Villains are challenging to write. Make them too heartless, and no one will find them believable. Make them too empathetic, and the audience will end up rooting for the wrong team. It can be difficult to create an antagonist with enough human virtue to be interesting and enough human foibles to be, well, villainous.
The Scientist Next Door: Or How to Approach Experts with Research Questions
by William Ledbetter
The email was short and straightforward. I identified myself as a science fiction writer who was curious about one aspect of their paper.
Overcoming Self-Doubt as a Writer
by Matthew Kressel
It’s become a cliché, the tortured writer beset by periods of crippling self-doubt. But things become clichés simply because they have been true for so many. Writing, for most people I know, is an experience of few victories and many small defeats.
Brain – Mental Ass Kickings = More Productive WriterBrain
by Barbara A. Barnett
So my takeaway from all this babbling is this: how you write isn’t always about getting words down. Sometimes it’s about looking at other aspects of your life and figuring out if there are changes you can make that will improve your ability to get those words down.
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