Archive for the ‘Information Center’ Category

The Reality of Writing in Uncertain Times

by Kali Wallace

By now everybody who spends any time on the internet has seen the quarantine memes. Isaac Newton invented calculus during a plague outbreak–what are you doing with your time? Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when stuck inside during bad weather–why haven’t you invented a literary genre yet? Look at how Giovanni Boccaccio used his pandemic–have you been as productive?

Persistence

by Bud Sparhawk

After being in the writing game for nearly thirty years and selling my output on a fairly steady basis I still find myself puzzled whenever another blank page stares at me. Ideas abound, but only a few may hold the power to become complete stories.

Making It Different – Pushing Genre Boundaries in Fantasy

by Martin Jenkins

One of the pleasures of genre is that it lets us identify a type of writing that we know we like. We’d feel short-changed if a crime novel didn’t feature a crime, after all, or if a romance didn’t put the travails of a relationship front and center. What we don’t want to see, however, is a mere repetition of genre tropes and clichés – it’s what is fresh and different in a work of fiction that keeps us turning the page while still being identifiably a genre work.

SFWA Statement from the President on Goodreads

We have had some productive conversations with Goodreads and wanted to update you. As some of you may be aware, over the course of several weeks, trolls created dozens of false accounts as part of a harassment campaign against some writers. We reached out to Goodreads to ask for assistance in stopping those attacks and they were, thankfully, responsive. Goodreads was as committed to solving this as SFWA was. If readers lose their faith with the site because of false reviews, that’s a problem for all of us.

Negotiation Tips for Writers

by Dan Brotzel

Many writers find it difficult to talk about money, especially if it means asking for more and potentially risking turning down an offer of publication. But writing is a business as well as a passion, and the more cash you can secure for it, the more time you’ll be able to devote to your craft. Here are a few pointers on how to approach the dark art of negotiation…

A Worldbuilding Guide to Crafting Diverse Cultures

by Amelia Wiens

One of the best parts of science fiction and fantasy is the worldbuilding. A key part of creating interesting worlds is creating diverse cultures that vary in some way from our own norms. That being said, it can be so hard to get out of our own culture’s point of view and redefine elements that we unconsciously take for granted.

Writing Down Fear

by Hunter Liguore

What do you fear when you sit down to write? Fear can be the debilitating emotion that prevents us from getting into the chair in the first place. It’s the force that makes lengthy excuses for why we can’t write. Next to procrastination, fear can cause us to abandon projects, call it quits, or worse, abandon the writing completely.