Effective Goal Setting for Writers
by Cat Rambo
Milestones are markers that show you’ve reached the end of one of these steps. Just as physical road markers tell you how far you’ve journeyed, these milestones help you mark progress.
Archive for the ‘Information Center’ Category
When Words Melt Away
by Hunter Liguore
Writing classes and books are filled with tips on creating characters and developing plot, but very few ever offer the golden jewel that oversees all the other components meshing together to arrive at a story or novel: coherence. In fact, when an author discovers coherence for the first time, they will experience a place where words melt away, and the only thing that remains is a deep knowing and trust in how the story will take shape.
Infringement Alert – “National Emergency Library”
Using the Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse, the Archive has created the “National Emergency Library” and removed virtually all controls from the digital copies so that they can be viewed and downloaded by an infinite number of readers.
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.
Book Releases on a Budget
by Catherine Lundoff
Got a new book coming out? If you need to do all or even some of your own publicity, a multi-pronged approach to getting the word out about it can very helpful. And, if you’re like most writers, your budget is somewhat limited. So let’s talk about what you can do that promotes your work, but keeps that promotion affordable.
Contracts Committee Alert on Reversion Clauses
When you have your first (or next) contract in front of you for a traditionally published book, you are likely thinking primarily about your advance and what rights you want to retain. But one of the most significant clauses, usually found somewhere toward the end of the contract, may be the most important for you in the long run: the reversion clause.
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.
Epistolary Tales: The Narration of Documentation
by Ken Pelham
Occasionally, you come across a work of fiction told in the form of documents. Letters, court reports, diaries, news articles, and such. We call this epistolary narration (from the root word, epistle, meaning “letter”). Some call epistolary a gimmick. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m a sucker for it.
