Fran Wilde is a longtime friend of the Inkpunks and a fellow fountain pen junkie. And she also writes cool books about a  kickass mom! Needless to say, it’s a delight to have her here on the blog. Sketchpunks Last August, I stood in a corner of Westminster Abbey — near Newton’s grave — while […]
Category > Ideation
Templates for Drafting & Revision: a guest post by Laurel Amberdine
We’re so excited to welcome Laurel Amberdine to the blog today! I’ve had the wonderful fun of working with Laurel at Lightspeed and the special Women Destroy issues, and let me tell you: she’s awesome. Here’s some great advice to get you ready to kick some serious word count butt. • • • Today, I […]
Character Generators
While listening to a Writing Excuses episode called Engaging Characters, their guest Nancy Fulda, mentioned character generators. (Season 9 Episode 10 http://www.writingexcuses.com/2014/03/09/writing-excuses-9-10-engaging-characters/ ) I’d never heard of such a thing! Since I’m working on a new novel outline, I was curious enough to check it out. I do already use a name generator to help […]
Be Your Own Sous Chef (or: Screw You, Burnout)
Ever have that experience where you just finished a project and you sit down to start another piece and … there’s nothing in there? There are no characters playing around in the back of your mind. No images floating around in your heart. No worlds waiting for you play in. Or maybe there is some small thing, […]
Exploratory Writing–a guest post by Kaolin Fire
Here’s a guest post from the fantastic writer/poet/editor/code dude/creator Kaolin Fire. If you’ve ever wondered what it means to write by the seat of your pants, this is the way he does it: Hello. My name is Kaolin, and I’m a pantser. I think that means the same thing for everyone, pretty much, but I was […]
Write-Brain Exercises
I spent the last two weeks with sixteen other writers under the tutelage of Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress at the Taos Toolbox workshop. I probably should’ve planned ahead to have my Inkpunks post ready for today before I left. Alas, I did not have that foresight. At the moment I’m a little (make […]
Conversations
This is not a post about writing dialogue. Last weekend, I caught up with an old friend over dinner. We first met in a now-defunct writers’ group, back when I first had an inkling I might want to give this whole writing thing a shot. As one of my first beta-readers and original fans, I […]
Abuse Your Muse
They will not force us…They will not control us…Rise up and take the power back! How many of you have read Northern Lights? (that’s The Golden Compass to you northamericaners.) Remember those animal daemons that followed the characters around? They were human souls made manifest. I sometimes picture our Muses in a similar fashion, except […]
Getting Started: The Hardest Part
Getting started is hard. In fact, I’ll even admit to having had a hard time starting this blog post. I procrastinated in every way I could: attending to other projects, watching Youtube videos (even horrible ones, I’ll spare you a link), cleaning, tweeting, talking on the phone, exercising, etc. I knew I had to write […]
The Premise that Sells
I love when lessons present themselves where you least expect them. Last weekend at Norwescon 34 in SeaTac, I went to see the PYR books presentation by the four-time Hugo Award nominated editorial director, Lou Anders. I attended to see the new covers and hear about the latest books, but it turned into far more. […]
