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.
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.
by Juliette Wade
I love to use non-English languages in a story. To me, a foreign language behaves like a form of music – it creates mood and atmosphere for the readers who don’t understand it, and it further creates a layer of meaning for those readers who do understand it.
by Juliette Wade
I love to use non-English languages in a story. To me, a foreign language behaves like a form of music–it creates mood and atmosphere for the readers who don’t understand it, and it further creates a layer of meaning for those readers who do understand it.
Cascade Writers Workshop (July 17-20, 2014) is a 4-day event in Kent, WA, just south of Seattle, specializing in science fiction and fantasy writing. Guest speakers include editor Beth Meacham, agents Bree Ogden and Lisa Rodgers, publisher Patrick Swenson, authors Tina Connolly and Mark Teppo, Alma Alexander, K.c. Ball, David Levine, Mark Henry, Camille Alexa, Randy Henderson, Spencer Ellsworth, and more.
I absolutely adore the Internet, but there’s no doubt it has made us more distracted than ever.I can see this in myself, and in watching everyone else around me: constant use of laptops, switching between browser tabs, checking things on iPhones, typing in a message here and there … we all do it.
by Theodora Goss
When I teach writing, I teach craft. Art goes beyond craft, and has to do with what a writer, as an individual, brings to writing. Art is in the way Virginia Woolf explores consciousness. In the way George Orwell writes about politics.
by Helena Bell
The application season for Clarion West and other Clarion (UCSD) has begun. I’ve already seen posts on twitter from past alums encouraging people to apply and telling the world what wonderful, glorious experiences they had.
I’m not going to do that. I’m going to tell you not to apply. To not go. And here are my reasons:
Dragons in your pickle jar. Devils at the diner. Sentient space ships named for epic poetry. All these and more inhabit the pages of the annual Alphanthology, an illustrated collection of flash fiction by alumni of the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers. Alpha is a nonprofit, ten-day residential workshop for teen writers of genre fiction, held every summer in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
by Deborah J. Ross I love to take conventional wisdom and turn it on its head, following the tradition of rules are made to be broken but first you have to learn them. Beginning writers make mistakes. At least, I did, and I don’t know anyone who’s gone on to a successful writing career who didn’t. At […]
Alternate history. Parallel worlds. Future crime. Alien invasion. Alien castaways. Time travel. Quantum intelligence—but don’t call him artificial. A haunted (sort of) robot. Deco punk. All this—and much more—spanning Ed’s writing career.
Author of Plague of Locusts and Margaret’s Ark, Dan’s short fiction has appeared in On Spec, Cemetery Dance, Apex and dozens more. He is also an editor and occasional film reviewer. More information on his work can be found at dankeohane.com.
