Short answer: caffeine and neuroses! How much are your characters an extension of yourself? This is a longer spectrum than one might think. At first blush, it might seem binary: either a character is based on you, or s/he isn’t. If s/he is, there’s a chance s/he’s the dreaded Mary Sue: a character who is 100% you (or what you wish you could be). Mary Sue tends to crop up in fanfiction, and is generally disliked. Why? Because when an…
(Image credit: Photos Public Domain) I’m an introvert who no longer works a traditional full-time job– so when my spouse goes out of town, I happily bunker in with my laptop and grind away. I added about 5-6K words to my manuscript in rewrites, drafted an article, drafted blog posts- waking up early each morning and falling asleep late each night. Friday, I picked my spouse up from the airport. With delays and weather, we didn’t get home until after…
(Image credit: Photos Public Domain) With National Novel Writing Month (aka Nanowrimo) wrapped up (heck no I didn’t participate, though it feels like I did- 29,000 new words added to my manuscript in the past couple of weeks!), it seems an apt occasion to explore what’s good and bad about the word count goal. The Word Count Goal Is Great On its face, it just makes sense. It’s the easiest possible way to quantify writing and measure progress. Most people…
(Image credit: Gratisography.com) Have you ever surprised yourself by half-assing a homework assignment, and getting an A on it? Or by posting something to social media you thought was dumb, but it really took off? Sometimes, the amount of sweat you put into something is inversely proportional to how well it comes out, and how well people receive it. Weird, but true. The makers of Goat Simulator only spent 10 weeks on development, yet have sold 1.1 million copies. Meanwhile,…
(Image credit: imagebase.net) November 2014 is a big month for me. My spouse and I have been together for 10 years- and it’s now 6 months since I jumped ship to write full time! I can’t believe how fast it’s gone. Am I glad I did it? 100%! Do I feel any yearn to go back to my old full-time schedule? Not at the moment. Though I do miss certain coworkers of mine, I’ve enjoyed a lot less anxiety since…
Help! There’s something I really need to write, but ugh! I just don’t want to! Have you ever felt this way? Careful- your spider-sense is tingling! Sit back for a moment and think about why. Your reluctance may just be pure procrastination, especially if it’s a homework or job assignment. To get past it, you’ll need to flex your discipline muscle, plunk your butt in front of the computer with minimal distractions, and after a few crappy sentences, you’ll be…
Or, ask both. (Image credit: Bill Main) Now that it’s November, I’m aware many of you are involved in an obscure, little-talked-about, mass binge-writing event. If you number among the participants, best of luck to you! Let me offer some help with the planning stages, so you don’t throw down 15,000 words and then realize you don’t know where the hell you’re going with it. Oh, you’re already at that point? No worries! I’ve got some rewrites of my own…
SIGIL is a popular tool for generating EPUB files. I’m still getting the hang of it. “Hey, I know CSS and HTML. I’ll make my own ebooks! How hard could it be?” Famous last words… :) Anyone who creates ebooks from scratch- without using a tool that promises to handle it with the push of a button, and doesn’t let you see what atrocities it’s actually committing- knows it can be a, um, trying process. Usually a multi-day slog that…
Let’s see if this little guy is up for some vacuuming… If you have a WordPress blog, or frequent the comments section of any high-traffic site, chances are you know all about comment spam. This blog doesn’t get much traffic, but boy, spammers love it. At one point, I was getting upwards of 30 spam comments daily- comments I’d clear from my WordPress dashboard and from my email several times a day. What a waste of time! But I embraced…
Run! Run like zombies are chasing you! Hey, there’s an app for that… Most of my mornings start the same way: alarm blaring, cat pawing at my hair. I crawl out of bed (eventually), have breakfast and coffee, and post a new “Today I learned” factoid to my Google+ page. Then, unless I’m sick enough to be bedridden, I sit down in my office and write until lunch, with occasional breaks to stretch and read items of interest. What I…