My spouse does long-form improv- similar to what you see on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, only a given scene lasts several minutes instead of a few seconds. It requires tons of practice to keep such a long scene engaging and funny off the top of one’s head. Sometimes, an improv scene peters out when characters get stuck talking about stuff they already did, or plan to do in the future. During rehearsal, coaches will yell “CUT TO THAT!” In…
(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…
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…
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,”…
(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…
(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…
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. …
(Image credit: Imagebase.net) Wow! I don’t have to go to work again- ever! This day can be anything I want! An amazing feeling- but also a worrying one. I don’t want to waste it. What should I do? I’d better decide fast- I’m wasting time RIGHT NOW. The question gnaws at me. Before I know it, I’ve wasted hours with unnecessary guilt and frustration. I should go write, right? Duh! That novel won’t finish itself. But there are a hundred other…
Astronaut drawing by Mark Bowytz – Cover design by Ellis Morning My short story In Perpetuity– originally published in the May 2014 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact– is now available for free! Choose your format below: MOBI EPUB PDF In Perpetuity represents several thrilling firsts: my first attempt at hard science-fiction, my first published short story, and my first serious effort at compiling ebooks. (And I thought website/browser compatibility was tricky!) The story began as one of many…
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…