The Post Novel Blues
by Paul Jessup
It seems to happen every single time I work on something larger than a novella. The minute I finish it, it seems like all of my creativity for fiction dries up.
Information Center, The SFWA Blog
Information Center
Information Center, The SFWA Blog
The Racial Rubber Stamp
by R.F. Kuang
What I’ve seen is that the lone POCs in largely white writing groups often become tokenized faux authorities. We’re consulted just enough to give other work a stamp of diversity approval, but brutally marginalized when their opinions become inconvenient.
Contracts and Copyrights, News, SFWA Nebula Conference
Infringement Alert
The Internet Archive (Archive.org) is carrying out a very large and growing program of scanning entire books and posting them on the public Internet. It is calling this project “Open Library,” but it is SFWA’s understanding that this is not library lending, but direct infringement of authors’ copyrights.
Information Center, The SFWA Blog
Surviving Times of Stagnation
by Paul Jessup
It will probably happen to you. Almost every career for a professional writer hits a snag at some point. Usually after a huge burst of activity and a feeling of momentum, of going somewhere. It comes out of nowhere, out of left field.
Information Center, The SFWA Blog
Building Worlds with SFWA
by Jeffe Kennedy
It’s apropos that “Lonen’s War,” book one in my Fantasy Romance series, “Sorcerous Moons,” is featured in the first SFWA Fantasy StoryBundle. That’s because the fantastically smart and helpful folks in SFWA helped me out with a worldbuilding challenge.
Information Center, The SFWA Blog
The Voodoo of Research
by Tim Susman
Since it’s fall and ghosts are in the air, I thought it might be a good time to talk about my research into vodou/voodoo, the religion and spiritual practices that coalesced on Haiti among the African slaves there and spread to America, most commonly and famously in New Orleans (for the purposes of this article, I use “vodou” to refer to the Haitian religion and “voodoo” to refer to the New Orleans practices).
Information Center, The SFWA Blog, Where to Submit Short Stories
On Writing of a Different Culture
by Douglas Smith
Eventually, I came to understand these stories were transcribed from versions people remembered being told when they were young or used to tell their children. Story telling was an oral tradition.
Information Center, The SFWA Blog, Where to Submit Short Stories
SFWA Market Report for September
Welcome to the September edition of the SFWA Pro-rate Market Report. Please note: Inclusion of any market in the report below does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA.
Information Center, The SFWA Blog
So You’re Thinking about a Low-Residency MFA
by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
Low Residency MFA’s in Creative Writing offer students a chance to study and practice writing without having to move or quit their jobs. There are more than sixty such distance-based programs in the U.S. and Canada.
Information Center
Guest Post: Instagram For Authors
by Mary Rosenblum
How can I advertise my book with photos?
I hear that all the time when I suggest Instagram to author clients, followed by the sound of the exit door slamming on the author’s heels…
But Instagram is a huge and well established social media platform, and if you’re writing for teens through mid-twenties readers, this is the social media you want to master. Even Forbes Magazine has taken note of Instagram’s role with an article Can Instagram Keep People Reading Books?
Information Center, The SFWA Blog
Tools for Online Collaboration
by Stewart C Baker
In the past decade, web-based applications have really come into their own. This is great for authors, because it makes collaborating much easier, especially when your co-author doesn’t live nearby. The tools in this list run the gamut from online chat software to fully-fledged cloud-based authoring software. And, of course, many of them can be wonderful productivity boosters for solo authors, too.
Information Center, The SFWA Blog
How to Write with a Co-author
by Stewart C Baker
Fiction writing is often presented as an intensely solitary pursuit, but look at the end of a published novel some time and you’ll see the author thank at least a dozen people for their help. And then there’s co-authoring…