As a writer, “style” is a thing we’re supposed to find. It will define us, they say; set us apart as a distinct, creative voice in a vast field of creative voices. It’s our brand. It’s the thing—our “signature”—that marks each of our stories or novels as uniquely ours no matter how different in subject matter […]
Category > Writing
Five Time and Task Management Tips for Writers.
I’m an IT project manager by day. For the past couple of months, I’ve started applying to my creative life some of the productivity techniques and principles I use at work. I thought I’d share some of my successes, with the hope that at least one of you may find them helpful. Please feel free […]
Working through self-doubt
I live with a character flaw that I cope with on a daily basis. It drags me down, sometimes to the edge of despair, like a lead weight tied around my waist. I know I’m not alone; most of my writers friends suffer from the same ailment. There is solidarity in our struggle — an […]
Fight Scenes That Sizzle
I write violent fiction. As a kid, I loved action movies and heroic fighting fantasy novels. I read The Iliad and The Odyssey when I was eleven and told my mom I preferred The Iliad because of the fight scenes. To this day, when I sit down to watch a movie, I will always […]
Scene-stealing Antagonists
Merriam Webster defines an antagonist as, “one that contends with or opposes another,” and lists “adversary” and “opponent” as synonyms. Oxford defines the term as, “a person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something; an adversary.” Of course in a literary context, an antagonist doesn’t have to be a person. I recall learning in […]
Hole in the Ground Contest!
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” This is the opening line to the Hobbit. According to Wikipedia, it came to Tolkien while he was grading papers. Not only should this bring hope to teachers and grad students everywhere, it’s the first step on an epic journey that many of us have […]
Writing About Fighting
One of the most helpful writing panels I’ve ever been to was at VCon in 2008, called Writing About Fighting. I learned so much from the panelists, got inspired to finally start taking martial arts and have had since had the honour of joining this annual panel at VCon. I’ve asked two of the panelists […]
Working With An Agent: Personality Counts (guest post by Mercedes Yardley)
Today’s guest post comes from the talented, kind, and very lovely Mercedes Yardley! She graciously made our blog a stop on her tour promoting her new short story collection, Beautiful Sorrows, which you should probably go buy and then devour like a box of tiny dark chocolates. Me: Hello, Brilliant Agent? Brilliant Agent: Hello, Talented […]
Sh*t from Shinola
If you’re like me, you spent most of Monday watching Hurricane Sandy pummel the east coast. Every image of flooded streets or burning power lines emblazoned itself into your retinas. The problem was, not all those pictures were real. The one above, for example, combined a photo of New York’s harbor with a storm […]
Fire it up! A writing exercise
Last week, Christie talked about using timed writing exercises to restart your creative fires. Here’s a similar exercise that you can use to jolt yourself out of a rut. It’s based on Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose method. You may have tried something similar in a writing class–I know I have. Find an object to study. Maybe […]
