Thursday, September 2, 2010
For this week’s 500 Club, I decided to revisit one of the scenes in my novel, The Iron Key, retelling it from one of my favorite secondary character’s point of view. If you want to take a crack at one of this week’s writing prompts, hop on over and go to. After all it’s only [...]
The onset of September has me feeling like the monkey Steve in Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs (Steve, awesomely, is voiced by everyone’s favorite magical unicorn Neal Patrick Harris).
Excited! Excited!
My Writing the Novel class with Jim Sallis is starting back up. This marks my fourth semester of re-enrollment. Why would I take the same [...]
It’s Thursday, and I’ve got a minute to play along with the 500 Club at The Parking Lot Confessional. If you like to dabble in flash fiction, you should mosey on over and play too.
Here’s my entry for today, using the first prompt. I ran a little over 500 words, but I was having too [...]
“Fiction has become culturally irrelevant,” says Lee Seigel over at the New York Observer. I am sure he was weeping into an Hermes handkerchief as he typed. Culturally irrelevant? Really? Pretty sure the Twilight franchise is one of the only things keeping beleaguered Hollywood afloat. Pretty sure J.K. Rowling is one of only 14 women [...]
Today S.C. Green wrote a post on PLC about humanizing one’s villains. Now, I am in complete agreement with some of the things he says- you should always know why your bad guy is doing what he’s doing. What’s his motivation? Side note- You should know the motivations of ALL your characters, major or minor, [...]
Also filed in Free Advice, Uncategorized, Writers I admire
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Tagged bad guys, character building, creating solid characters, fiction writing, Free Advice, motivation, plc, plotting, responses, s.c. green, star wars, villians
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LepreCon is a really small, local con. I’ve never been this until this year, but the Writer GOH was George R. R. Martin, and the artist GOH was Charles Vess, so really, how could I not go? I missed all of Friday’s programming, which sucked because it was the heartiest schedule. Saturday’s scheduling was rather [...]
Also filed in Writers I admire
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Tagged Charles Vess, Diana Gabaldon, Dr. Grordobort, George R. R. Martin, Guiness, LepreCon 36, pacing, Poisoned Pen, Ray Guns, Serenity, Writing
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Thursday, October 8, 2009
What does it mean when you find yourself conjugating the grammar of shapes? It seems that the formally inscrutable scrawls of physical reality have made themselves legible to me.
I come to realize that writing is like physical exercise. What counts is how much you can do after you think you are done.
-Kabuki
The last 3 [...]
Today I am linking to the wonderful Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s Stupid Plot Tricks. Follow the rules and you’ll end up with a plot too insane NOT to write. Although, if you’re as blind as I am you’ll want to increase the type on her page, it’s like, 6pt, I swear. Anyway, I particularly like [...]
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
I read a lot of books. I don’t necessarily read the newest releases as soon as they come out. Rather, I rely on an esoteric process that combines how good the first page reads in the store, what I’ve heard about the book or author, and sheer whim. So the books I review [...]
Monday, December 31, 2007
I’m trying out a new format here at Smoldering Ink. And part of that new format is what I call Inspiration Mondays. Because no one likes Mondays. I have to work twice as hard to get anything done on a Monday, and I’m sure the same goes for you. I figure we could all use [...]
