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 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.
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.
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. […]
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 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.
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.
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.
Tollar has a stolen dragon egg & that’s the least of her problems. When the dragon hatches & imprints on her, she must rely on her anxious neighbour. As threats loom, it will take cooperation & some impressive magic to keep everything they love safe.
John W. Maly holds degrees in law, psychology, and computer engineering and has worked in computer technology litigation for over a decade. A graduate of Stanford University’s Novel Writing program, John is an avid traveler, reader, and writer.
