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Category: Advice

The Rapid Prototype Model of Drafting

The Rapid Prototype Model of Drafting

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(Image credit: Imagebase.net) When most people think of “editing,” they think of reclining on the couch with a printout, red pen in hand, making tiny, gentle corrections in the space of an afternoon.  Probably followed by a cookie and a well-earned nap. With a novel-length work, though, editing is a complicated slog.  You take out extraneous words, and collapse chapters.  You add words where they’re lacking, and split chapters.  You say, “holy crap, this character would NEVER do/say that!”  You…

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My Firefly Break

My Firefly Break

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The view out my front door is ever-changing.  A developer has torn out a high school that used to be there to put in apartment buildings, offices, and townhouses over the next several years.  Presently, a mountain chain of excavated dirt stares me in the face.  On its right lies a lovely new bike and pedestrian path that, once open, will provide a shortcut to a major street, a park, and our groceries. On its left is a patch of…

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The Easiest Way to Back Up Your Files, Right Now

The Easiest Way to Back Up Your Files, Right Now

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Quick, let’s go back and save fourteen year-old me! When I was a middle-school teenager, back in the era of one computer per household, my dad got mad at me for something- I don’t recall what.  Shortly thereafter, I logged into the family computer, and discovered my personal folder on the hard drive- the repository for everything I did- missing.  Not in the trash, not in a different folder, just gone like it never existed. “You must’ve downloaded a virus,”…

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It Sucks- So Don’t Give Up!

It Sucks- So Don’t Give Up!

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(Image credit: Imagebase.net) At a writer’s group meeting, a fellow member was discussing his work from several years back, lamenting how it all sucked. I told him, “GOOD!” He was confused.  How is that possibly good? Two reasons: he’d improved his writing over time, and he’d recognized as much. Do you ever cringe, looking at stuff you worked on years earlier?  Some of my writing from high school and college, ugh- the prose is so purple, it craps violets.  In…

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My Transition From Fanfic to Original Fiction

My Transition From Fanfic to Original Fiction

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(Image credit: texturezoom.com) To me, writing fanfiction (i.e. stories set in pre-established fictional universes, like Star Trek for instance) is akin to filling holes in a mostly assembled jigsaw puzzle.  You can have a lot of fun, and make something beautiful that lots of people will appreciate, without much effort. In contrast, original fiction requires chopping down a tree, running planks through the wood chipper, creating pulp, turning the pulp into cardboard, drawing a beautiful illustration on the cardboard, scoring…

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Talk Through The Block, And Other Tips For Getting Your Brain Unstuck

Talk Through The Block, And Other Tips For Getting Your Brain Unstuck

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A giant rubber duck swam through my hometown in 2013.  Photo by Remy Porter. My past jobs involved a lot of tech support- not just the stereotypical “Is your machine plugged in?” fare, but also talking with developers about their code, how they could fine-tune performance and make the best use of the APIs I supported. One of my all-time favorite users (for real- no sarcasm) called me up frequently concerning an especially painful application that fell under my purview. …

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Spatial Reasoning- How A Deficient Writer Copes

Spatial Reasoning- How A Deficient Writer Copes

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I struggle to visualize characters interacting inside of a space.  There, I said it! My spatial reasoning is poor.  Given a description of a set of objects, and a change to apply to one or more of those objects, I usually can’t tell you the end result off the top of my head.  I must draw or act things out to arrive at the answer. In my college programming courses, I filled notebooks with sketches of arrays and registers, and…

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Bob Ross on Editing: “Don’t Fiddle It To Death”

Bob Ross on Editing: “Don’t Fiddle It To Death”

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I love watching The Joy of Painting at the end of a long day.  Bob Ross is relaxing, entertaining, and has much wisdom to offer artists of all stripes.  Near completion of a painting, one of his favorite bits of advice is, “Now, don’t fiddle this to death.”  You risk ruining your happy little trees by endlessly tweaking and fussing over them. The same thing applies when we writers put on our editing caps.  We second-guess word choice and sentence…

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4 Tricks To Enhance Your Brainstorming

4 Tricks To Enhance Your Brainstorming

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(Image credit: imagebase.net) A writer logs a huge portion of his or her life at desk, computer, and notebook.  Everyone dreams about stories, but only by spending months grinding through sentence after sentence, thinking and rethinking, obsessing, anguishing, tearing down and throwing up, does a story or a book actually come into existence. We’re all too aware of those who dream, but never put in the effort.  We’re all too aware of the games procrastination plays with us.  When we…

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Mr. Wizard and Proofreading

Mr. Wizard and Proofreading

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I haven’t seen the Nickelodeon show in decades, but hunting up these clips on Youtube makes me feel like I never stopped watching. It was a pleasant surprise to collide with an experiment that shows how important it is to slow down when proofreading!  I’ll let Mr. Wizard and his assistant give you some other good tips. Any proofreading tips you’d like to add? Share in the comments!