If 2007 was the year I got serious about writing, then 2010 was the year when attitude and education caught up with intent. Think of it as the difference between declaring a major (2007) and doing your first internship in a Ph.D. program (2010). Up till this year, I did …
It’s NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, when many of you who don’t normally write will be trying to write a short novel in 30 days (and some of you who normally do will try to get a jump start on projects that need doing). Generally people find it easy …
If you want the background for this post, check The Binge post for a description of my recent unintentional astronomical word count adventure. Short version: I wrote one hundred twenty three thousand words in fifty days. Yow. So, you may ask, what did I learn from writing 123k words in …
By the time I finish writing this article, I’ll have written 123,000 words in fifty days. The output constitutes two short-book-length works (one novel, one reference work), nine blog posts, two commissioned articles, and some odds and ends of work on another novel. For the first half of the duration, …
A few months back, after grinding my eight-year-old generic ergo keyboard into the ground I found myself in need of a new ergonomic keyboard. The keyboard failed on a deadline, so I had little choice but to do that thing you’re not supposed to do: shop for computer equipment at …
As a writer, like most writers, I have one giant terror point. For some people it’s the writing. For some people it’s showing your work to friends, or to strangers. For some people it’s marketing in general. For me, it’s marketing fiction to editors. I don’t have a problem with …
Last night I had occasion to send an email to Spider Robinson, thanking him for his recent book Variable Star, a posthumous collaboration with Robert A. Heinlein. If you are unfamiliar with Spider’s work, or have not read Variable Star, you owe it to yourself to take a gander. All …
Download Subscribe Part three of three of the live call-in show that launched Down From Ten — this one plays almost like a Reprobates Hour episode on the history of the podcast novel. A change of pace from the previous episodes, and a very interesting one.
Download Subscribe Part two of the live call-in show we did for the launch of Down From Ten, in which we take your calls, talk about the craft of writing and podcasting, and argue about what makes for a good story. We also take more saucy calls from listeners.
by Gail Carriger [In honor of her new book Soulless, which impressed me with its groundedness in the Victorian world, I asked author Gail Carriger to blog about the art of finding good research sources for Steampunk writing. This is her contribution – thank you very much, Ms. Carriger! -JDS] …