Now why would anyone want to do that: write 1000 words every day for a week?
Writing Twenty Novels (In Ten Easy Steps!)
During a recent telephone conversation, I mentioned having sent off the last revisions for my twentieth novel, Great Sky Woman. There was a silence on the other side of the phone, followed by the question How in the world do you do that? Twenty novels!
The truth is that I know many writers who have written far more than twenty novels. It is not that unusual. In fact, if you are a working writer, the perfect output is very close to a book a year. Less often than this,…
Your Love Affair With Your Muse
Hows your love affair with your Muse?
No Time: Your Best Fake Excuse To Avoid Writing
After a full day of work, family and life, you fall into bed exhausted. Mentally ticking off your to-do list, you cycle through shopping lists, phone calls, appointments, feeling good about what you have gotten done, until you get to the thing you really want to do. You lay there, bathed in regret why didnt you get your writing done today? You vow to do it tomorrow. You will make time for your novel or that article you know would sell. You consider angles, write a few line…
The Phases Of The Writers Life
Over the course of my writing life, I have noticed that other writers and I cycle through a series of steps on our path toward maturity as a writer. When people come to me for coaching, they often do not know where they are on the path and what they need to move forward. Ive identified the phases and given suggestions for the support will best serve at each phase. Of course, I have seen the powerful impact of coaching at each phase, but I have added other means of support th…
Four Useful Lies About Writing
Most writing experts favor a particular way of looking at plot, and will adhere to it for years or an entire career. Thats all well and good, but its important to realize that any way of modeling story is just thata model, not the depths and living essence of story itself.
Problems arise when young (or experienced!) writers mistake a simplified structure for some deep and eternal truth. Its much better to examine several structures, see what their strengths and weakne…
Carving Out A Home Writing Retreat
The phone rings. The laundry pleads to be stuffed, cycled, dried and folded. Chaos reigns in the kitchen, e-mails queue for attention. Our lives are at once mundane and undeniably seductive at the same time. When we sit down to write at home, suddenly everything that marks our existence as tedious becomes compelling. Writing at home can seem tantamount to training for the Olympics past age nineteen.
The Lazy Man’s Guide To Great Characterization
One subject arising whenever writers gather to discuss their craft is the mining of life itself for story material. While a vital and important technique, it is important to remember that real human beings are impossibly complex, far too complicated to serve as story characters without major modification. The most complex character in all of western fiction (arguably), Hamlet, is still only 1% as complex as a real human being.
One must remember that there is a unity betwe…
The Three “Questions” Of Science Fiction
There is a great deal of misunderstanding about what that particular branch of literature called Science Fiction actually consists of. Is it space-ships and monsters? Time machines? Galactic empires? Well, its all of those things, and often none of them.
Science Fiction, broadly speaking, is story-telling that deals with the impact of organized knowledge on human beings. Usually, this means technology, and the way it changes usand reveals about us. After all, most techn…
The “Casablanca” Secret
Good writing is often designed around a character who has a distorted vision of himself or of the world. During the story, he is placed under sufficient pressure to force an epiphany, a moment of clarity in which, he sees the world as it is, not as he wished it to be.
A classic example is Casablanca, where Bogarts immortal Rick has managed to create an insular world in which he can pretend to be utterly detached and uninvolved. He supposedly has no political beliefs, an…
Forget About “Talent”!
How is a writer to access her deepest and most powerful wells of creativity? How do we tap into our talent, our genius, our greatest potential for success? Writing classes often tell us how to plot, or structure, or build characters, or create poetic images, but the question of accessing our excellence is a slippery and elusive one. It is possible well need to go outside our usual sources to find an answer.
Many will merely say be born with talent, coldly suggesting tha…
How To Survive A Good Review
When the first reviews for my most recent novel (Great Sky Woman, Random House 2006) started coming in, my emotions went through the usual roller coaster. The first, from Publishers Weekly, was 90% positive, but mentioned that, in their opinion, it was slow in spots. My stomach sank. Slow? In spots? Oh my Godall is lost!
The second review came in two weeks later. This one, from Booklist, used words like magnificent and engaging and adventure on a grand scale.
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