A Sword and Starship prequel has been an idea of mine for many years. I always thought it would be interesting to show some of Dame Jessamine’s earlier questing without the baggage and complexities of a full novel. Unfortunately, none of the ideas I ever had for a such a quest ever grabbed me. I struggled with both premise and theme. In other words, what should the darn thing be about, and what message should it deliver? I used to…
Happy belated Persian New Year to all! :) Very often it’s after I’ve declared a section “done” that I start getting the flood of ideas I wish I’d gotten when I was first drafting the thing. “Hey, wouldn’t it be better if [x] happened instead?!” Yes, yes it would. I usually go back and make those changes immediately, especially if they precipitate changes that will carry forward through the rest of the manuscript. I also make sure to correct any…
I saw a tweet the other day (sadly, I forget by whom) about how we Americans obsess over productivity and efficiency gains when the most rewarding things we’ll ever do in life—for instance, learning something new or producing something creative—are extremely inefficient processes. It really made me sit back and go, “Huh.” I like to envision my creative process as whittling a statue from a block of marble: put in time and effort, and voila! Finished product. Only it’s not…
With the release of Harbingers, the story I began working on in 2009 with the hazy goal of finishing a single novel has now materialized into 2 published books. Hooray! But something looks a little off there. 8 years to finish 2 books? Lots of authors publish novels on a yearly basis. I’ll tell you right now: I’m not “lots of authors.” I haven’t distilled novel-writing down to a crank-’em-out science. But, I also don’t think it’ll take 4 years to outline, draft, and finish Sword…
For most of the time I was drafting Blood’s Force, I was solely focused on that project. All of my brainstorming and creative energy were attuned to where that story was going next, and how it was going to get there. An impressive feat of focus and discipline, but after a while, all that squinting in one direction strained my creative vision. It took me a while to realize the value of increased sanity breaks away from writing – usually…
When I go on vacation, I have a rule of spending as little time on the computer as possible. This was especially true when I had a regular full-time job, but I don’t see things changing as a freelancer. I paid good money to put myself in a different place for a while, to experience that place – so I might as well experience it. There will be ample email- and social media-fooling-around time when I get home. I make…
Scattered across the Internet, you’ll find a set of “fiction” or “short story” rules (depending on the source) attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers. My own judgment is that they’re more useful for short fiction than long, because they’re mostly geared toward getting to the point and not wasting the reader’s time. Of course that’s important in any fiction, but for a short story, it’s crucial. I happen to be plunking at a couple of short stories at…
If you’re looking to add realism to a fight sequence, talk to someone who’s been in a few fights. Hey- that’s me! Okay, quick disclaimer: I don’t like fighting. I’m not good at it. But it’s something I’ve had to practice in my martial arts career, for good reason. For one thing, I know I won’t get totally wailed on in a real fight (because I’ve been in a real fight, and I wasn’t wailed on). For another, it teaches…
We hear it all the time: show, don’t tell. And most of the time, that’s solid advice. But there are occasions where a tell is necessary, or just a better idea: for the sake of brevity, backstory, worldbuilding, your series theme song, that sort of thing. The way to do tells is to weave them in as seamlessly and naturally as possible. They should be ninja, dropping information into your readers’ minds without anyone being the wiser. Why? Because an…
Arguably, the most important thing to get right about writing is actually sitting down and doing it. I’ve commented before on where to find time, and how to build up the discipline to use that time well when it arrives. Know what’s just as important, but isn’t mentioned nearly as often? You need a damn break once in a while. You need to get away and think about anything but writing. Let ideas meld and play around in your subconscious,…