To talk about this, I need to talk about the scariest thing that ever happened to me. Bear with me.
In 1999, I was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. The car behind me tapped my bumper, sending me fishtailing across several lanes, and under a trailer truck, which sheared the roof off the car.
Graduation season has come and gone, but we’ve seen lots of great commencement speeches around, from Neil Gaiman’s to Aaron Sorkin’s. They made me mildly nostalgic.
Short stories are a proving ground. They let you get out there, try a bunch of things out, and make your mistakes small so you don’t have to make all of them big. When I hear an unpublished writer talking about the epic fantasy trilogy they’re going to write, my first thought is, “What a shame.”
An outline is a roadmap. It helps you decide the overall shape of the novel. It does not lock you into that structure if you stumble upon something interesting.
There are tons of great resources on writing fiction, and I won’t even attempt to get into all that information here. What I’m going to focus on are the macro, big-picture things I’ve learned through personal experience.
[SWFA’s presence at BEA] this year was an experiment, but a wildly successful one. We were able to inform, educate and engage people from all areas of the publishing world. Dozens of bloggers and librarians stopped by to talk to us and thank us for being there.
& Smell the Coffee-Colored Skin, White Authors!
Which came first—the chicken, the egg, or the egg white omelet—I don’t know. But the discussion glosses over an obvious gap: white authors.
When it comes to social networking, Pinterest has emerged as a major player. Cat Rambo provides an excellent overview.
Everyone can improve their abilities at almost anything with determination, practice, and coaching.
My personal preference is for what I’ve called third-order answers. A lot of mysteries have an obvious culprit, and then a character who is, if you know your narrative conventions, the obvious alternative to the obvious culprit. I like mysteries that go one step further.
A smash-hit near-future reality show is offering a lifetime of luxury to the one person living the world’s worst life, and now everyone is out to prove just how bad they’ve got it.
– “Hilarious and horrifying,” says Foreword Reviews
Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine writer with nearly three hundred stories published in fourteen countries, in seven languages. He is also the author of several books, including the well-received novel Siege. He lives in Buenos Aires.
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