Category > Writing

Quick-and-Dirty Tips for Polishing Your Prose

So, you’ve brainstormed, written, and rewritten. The plot is sufficiently exciting, the theme powerful, the dialogue realistic, the characters complex and believable, the ending unpredictable yet perfectly fitting. Point-of-view and tense issues have been addressed, grammatical errors corrected, clichés banished. But yet…after reading your piece one last time, a lingering dissatisfaction remains. It doesn’t seem […]

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Follow These Five Principles to Writing Mastery (in 10,000 hours or less!)

I like the concept of the 10,000 Hour Rule, made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. Boiled down to its essence, it states that 10,000 hours of practice leads to expertise or mastery of a skill. The Rule is overly simplistic and not universally applicable, but it highlights the importance of hard work as a […]

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New Year, New Goals: Let’s Review Responsible Goalsetting!

I’ve talked about it before, but it’s a useful topic and since my post is due on New Year’s Eve, I figured it was a pertinent topic well-worth repeating: responsible goalsetting for creative types (or, anyone, really). Obviously setting goals will help you along with your creative career, or with anything else you hope to […]

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Superstars and Whatnot

It was at the Illustration Masters Class where I first heard Greg Manchess declare that there is no such thing as talent. A rather startling premise to tell a bunch of aspiring artists. But no, Greg stated that artistic skill “is built, not possessed”, created by hard work and training. I wonder about this idea, […]

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The Reindeer Games of the Writer’s Brain

As I sit here and compose my last Inkpunks post for 2013, I find myself reflecting on the past year with an uncomfortable mix of contentment and frustration. It was a very rough year, full of personal and professional setbacks. In the wee, cold hours of these winter nights, my Writer’s Brain precipitates these frustrations […]

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On Sticky Notes, Character Wheels, and Russian Folklore, Or…Planning a Novel

I first met bestselling author Jodi McIsaac when she joined our local speculative fiction writing group (IFWA), shortly after she moved from Vancouver to Calgary. Then I had the pleasure of attending one of her panels at When Words Collide, entitled “Plotters, Pantsers, and Quilters.” She was firmly in the “plotters” camp. And when I […]

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How to Scare People

The great thing about having guests of honour like Dan Wells at your local convention, is you get to hear words of wisdom from the best in the industry right in your backyard, so to speak. At VCon this year, Dan did a work shop called How To Scare People, something he does often in […]

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a short collection of past Inkpunky advice

Ya know, these inkpunk people have written a lot of really smart stuff. I remember when I first started reading the blog a few years ago each new post was a breath of fresh air and inspiration. At the time I was trying to restart my own creative life with ambitions to write an epic […]

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Detailed Character Descriptions: Yea or Nay?

On August 20, 2013, we received the sad news that great American writer Elmore Leonard had passed away. I’m ashamed to admit I’d never heard of Mr. Leonard before Twitter told me of his passing, though of course I was familiar with the Hollywood adaptations of his work. That day, Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of […]

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A Eulogy on Character: Andrew Brechin

Today’s guest post comes from Colleen Anderson. Colleen freelances in copyediting and writing and also edits poetry for Chizine and does slush manuscript editing for ChiZine Publications. She’s a past editor for Aberrant Dreams, has edited for many first-time novels for individuals and has worked with publishers and magazines. Her poem “Of the Corn: Kore’s […]

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