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Monthly Archives: September 2010

On Needing to Write: Feeding the Hunger

Tweet I talked yesterday about my amazingly successful first NaNoWriMo — in terms of word count, anyway. It’s hard for me to give myself too much credit for the book, though. It’s still in its first draft state, and sitting in limbo as the third book in a four-part series that’s still missing a decent […]

On Needing to Write: My First NaNoWriMo

Tweet Last week I haunted you all with threats of the pending National Novel Writing Month, stating a little prematurely that “Next month, you’re going to write a novel.” I watched (and even commented on) your public reactions to that claim, and some of you were rightly terrified at the time investment looming oh-so-near. Others […]

What I Learned about Writing this Week…from Sybil and Dexter

Part of my joy in writing has always been finding out what makes people tick and integrating that knowledge into my characters. I also wanted to use my talents to help others, so psychology seemed a great fit. Much to my dismay, I discovered fairly early on that to pursue this vocation to its fullest, I would need at least a master’s degree, if not a doctorate…

On Document Style: How to Use Section Breaks in Microsoft Word

Tweet No, you’re not mistaken — that’s a title you’ve seen before. It was the title of the application article on my last Document Style series, and it’ll probably be the title of the third article in next week’s, too. Because that’s what we’re doing. Whether you’re trying to manage text columns, headers and footers, […]

On Document Style: Headers and Footers

Tweet Yesterday I told a story about Annabelle playing pretend, whether that meant announcing herself to be a ferocious dragon to scare off things that go bump, or an innocent young babe to get away with outright disobedience. Either way, there’s magic in a little bit of delusion. And if you read the article when […]

On Document Style: Declaring Your Variables

Tweet As I’m sure all three-year-olds do, our precious little Annabelle has an incredible imagination, and she puts it to great use. As a storyteller, of course, I’ve cherished every moment of that. Or…well, nearly all of them. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here, but one of my proudest moments as a father […]

On NaNoWriMo: How to Get the Most Out of National Novel Writing Month

Tweet Hmm…I seem to have started something of a panic among those of you who already know NaNoWriMo. Take a deep breath. You’ve got a month and a half still before you’re even supposed to start. I started discussing it now for those who haven’t done it before, though. It can take some convincing, especially […]

On NaNoWriMo: Writing a Book

Tweet Yesterday I told you how I bullied my dad and older sister into writing their first novels. I’m pretty sure both of them would jump at the chance to thank me for it. I can’t do that for you. I’m going to do my best to try — as Unstressed Syllables lumbers toward its […]

On NaNoWriMo: Next Month, You’re Going to Write a Novel

Tweet I’ve talked before about my miserable years in Tulsa, and how they coincided with my failed efforts to shop my novel to publishers. Essentially, I spent my first year out of college rewriting Taming Fire, and then my second year shopping it around. Now, while I was shopping that novel, I did what every […]

What I Learned About Writing This Week…from Stephenie Meyer (sort of)

I am technologically illiterate. I am not up on the latest gadgets, gizmos, whizgigs, and whatsits. Facebook was around a good five years before I even heard of it, and I resisted Twitter for as long as I possibly could. Printer cables mystify me… So when this fellow writer, she of the sparkly vegetarian blood-suckers, confronted me with this alien creature known as playlist.com, I almost didn’t know what to do with myself…