While I can’t talk about what all authors want from a beta, because I am not all authors, I can say what I want from a beta, because I am one author (kinda). Maybe this will apply broadly. We shall see. The author-beta relationship is a strange one. The author exposes a vulnerable, still-in-the-works thing […]
Category > Writing
The Dos and Don’ts of Your Online Presence
You’ve heard it before: Fake it ’til you make it. In a larger sense this means that if we want to be viewed as professionals, we need to act like professionals. In this particular instance, we can use it as a guide toward how to comport ourselves online. Eventually we are going to make that […]
Pushing the Boulder: Making the leap from short story to novel
The act of writing is a lot like the Greek king Sisyphus’ endless task, to push a boulder up a hill, only to see it roll down and have to start all over again. It’s a long, often thankless task and it’s all too easy to give up. We write on faith, believing that our […]
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. […]
Standing Out in the Slushpile: Some Basic Tips
For the past four-and-a-half months, I’ve hardly written anything, focusing instead on four anthology projects (Broken Time Blues, a reprint anthology, a young-adult anthology, and the re-release of Rigor Amortis). Before I get back to writing, and while the business of editing is fresh in my mind, I thought I should post my own version […]
Write What You Don’t Know
On the surface, you’d think that writing what you *don’t* know should come naturally to authors of specfic. I mean, how much does anyone really know about what it feels like to face a Hound of Tindalos, or to download an assassin’s persona into your brain, or to have your body transformed by the effects […]
An Introductory Primer to the Clarion Workshops
It’s that time of year. Winter has faded, birds are beginning their first tentative tweets, and a new class of Clarion students has been selected. The Clarion Workshops have a reputation for turning out many distinguished writers, like Kij Johnson, Gordon Van Gelder, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Cory Doctorow, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Bruce Sterling, […]
Look Where You Want To Be
I’ve been rereading Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife recently, and trying to apply the things to my life in my own way. In doing so, I’m actually giving name to the ways I already protect myself and my creativity. There’s an old piece of riding wisdom that I use to guide the majority of my life: “Keep […]
Why CREEPY is my thing
I wasn’t creepy until I fully embraced my inner writer. That person was born from a depraved childhood in the 1980s. See, we lived so far out in the boonies that we didn’t have nice, clean, FCC-approved television. We had books. And unlike those poor sad children of the 1960s, who parents might have […]
Maintaining a Willingness to Learn
This is a post on editing, rewriting, and being willing to take a critique, and I fear that writers recently edited by me will think this post is about, or aimed at, them. It’s not. Well, mostly not. It’s about my own journey as a writer; the most important lesson I’ve learned from being critiqued […]
