Contrary to what you may have read, no one can teach you how to write well. Writing well can be learned, providing there is an innate proclivity for language and, more importantly, the desire to learn how to use it. I will avoid creating another ill-advised list of the things one should do in order…
Book #12: Blocking In
Blocking in is the stage I am in with my current work-in-progress, not its title. This is to be my ninth novel and the twelfth book overall. When I came up with the initial sketch (the first plot outline) I’d envisioned this as literary fiction. However, to do justice to what I wanted to say…
The Top 100 Writers – Finding the Best Writers in History
Originally posted on The 79 Percent:
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on This Blog Intentionally Blank in 2012, and after well over 100,000 views, it has been updated and posted here. It should already be evident to all of you that finding the absolute best of anything as subjective as writing is impossible. However,…
Accommodations
Anger roils within me, though I give it no surface. One dozen careers have I had, brief though some have been, and through them all, I’ve upheld my share of the coffin, pallbearer have I been for my own ambitions. A few fellow coffin-haulers did so with glad hands back-clapping me in gleeful celebration of…
1st Draft Complete
I am pleased to relate that I’ve completed the first draft of my 11th book, an epic science fiction novel. This book evolved to be sort of a sequel to my novelette The Farr Road, since it takes place in the same universe and even features one of the critical characters. I used the word…
Excerpt from “The Farr Road”
This is a brief excerpt from “The Farr Road,” the lead novelette in my science fiction collection, Beyond the Farr Road, available on Amazon.com. I have been an idiot for the better part of my life, but I have rarely been stupid. Now, I realize one might think those two things the same, but you…
Excerpt from My Current Work In Progress
Here’s this morning’s excerpt from my current work-in-progress, an epic science fiction novel. I’ll keep the name to myself, for now. I’m not sure how long this will be here, but here goes. For the first time since leaving the alley, she had and chance to bend over and catch her breath. “Are you okay,…
How to Paint Layers into Your Writing
After watching my wife work on a couple of her oil paintings, I’ve come to realize that producing a work of fiction is very similar to creating a painting. Too many new writers have unrealistically low expectations about how good a first draft can be due to an overabundance of writerly advice that suggests fixing…
Plot Outline Template
As a novelist, I’m firmly in the plotter camp. For some of my shorter stories, and, oddly, most of my novelettes, I tend to let the story unfold organically, thinking no more than a page or two ahead. But for novels, there are too many intricacies and loose ends that need tying together to just…
I’m Writing Six Books at Once
It’s stupid, I know, but I have a bunch of sequel and new book ideas and I’ve been struggling to decide which one I like the most. They all have working titles, but I’m not revealing them yet. It’s actually seven books, but that’s more a collection of stories, which is a distinctly different process….
