by Aidan Doyle
The Pomodoro Technique is a popular time management system that has helped improve my writing productivity. The technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo and basically involves setting a timer for 25 minutes and focusing on a single task.
It’s awards season. It comes around every year, and every year authors wonder whether they should put their work out for consideration.
This can be a scary thing.
by Randy Henderson
Happy New Year!
Rather than share events from my past year, I thought I’d offer a bit of encouragement and advice to help with the coming year. While this is aimed primarily at my fellow writers, it also, I think, can be applied to life in general.
by Nancy Fulda
If you write stories, this has probably happened to you:
The words are flowing. The plot is exciting. Your characters, faced with overwhelming odds, find themselves in the midst of a difficult and absolutely enthralling situation. It’s the Big, Dramatic Moment of your story – and you have no idea what happens next. The bad guys are too strong, the social pressures are too powerful, the pit is too deep, or your character is too broken. Try as you might, you can’t think of a single way to get your protagonist out of the current crisis.
by Jason Sanford
This has been a tough writing year for me. I finished my first novel only to learn that at this point in my writing career it’s going to be a hard sell. I’ve struggled with short fiction, publishing only two stories this year. I’ve even wondered why I’m writing stories in the first place (which probably ties back with the issues I’ve had with the novel and short fiction). All of this caused me to step back and reflect on my writing career up to this point. And I’ve realized I’ve made just about every mistake an author can make, career-wise.
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.
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 […]
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.
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.
By Leo Babauta
I’m here to talk about how I push past what Seth Godin calls “The Dip” — that slump that we all hit when things get hard, which is (sometimes) before the place where things get great.
A Vodou priestess turned amateur sleuth investigating a ritual murder is embroiled in an insidious case of corruption that reaches beyond the shadows of New Orleans.
A multi-award-winning author, Doug’s books include The Wolf at the End of the World, Chimerascope, Impossibilia, Playing the Short Game, and (soon) The Dream Rider Saga.
“One of Canada’s most original writers of speculative fiction”—Library Journal
