Fear has a powerful ability to cease up the creative mind. Not only in doing our work itself, but what we do with it after it’s finished– or as finished […]
Read moreCategory: perils of the writer
Intention and Interpretation
I’ve been watching Girls on HBO of late*, and it’s a solid, interesting show. It’s had a lot of firestorm surrounding it, but that’s not what I’m going to talk […]
Read moreHitting Beloved Characters with Rocks
“My job is to chase him up a tree and throw rocks at him.” -J. Michael Straczynski, on writing Amazing Spider-man John Scalzi’s Redshirts came out this week, and I […]
Read moreAdding just a hint of mustard
Seven years ago, when I first participated in the ArmadilloCon Writers’ Workshop (two more weeks until the sign-up deadline!), I brought the first chapter of an early draft of the […]
Read moreEmbracing the Spectacular Failure
‘As if it matters how a man falls down…when the fall is all that’s left, it matters very much.’ – A Lion in Winter, James Golden* Bear with me […]
Read moreDigging into the Iceberg
As much as I talk about Worldbuilding, when it comes to the actual writing of books, I don’t put too much on the surface. Sometimes it’s out of fear of […]
Read moreLoading Up Chekhov’s Armory
“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not […]
Read moreLosing the Passion
Last night PBS aired the BBC Sherlock episode “The Reichenbach Fall”, which is a modernized variant of the original Doyle short story “The Final Problem”. The Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock […]
Read moreAnother Plug of ArmadilloCon Writers’ Workshop
The deadline for submissions for the ArmadilloCon Writers’ Workshop is a month away. High time to plug it again.—The ArmadilloCon Writers’ Workshop has become a major event for aspiring SF/F […]
Read moreAction, Agency, Passivity, Pacifism
There is a tactic some writers (and screenwriters) use to put their characters in the “hero” column. It’s a tactic that is most recently used in “The Hunger Games” (with […]
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