Tweet At this point, you’ve got my NaNoWriMo review, and you’ve got Courtney’s, and if you’re following any other writers’ blogs (as you probably should be), you’ve got a lot more. NaNoWriMo is all about not looking ahead, and not looking back, but just looking right at the blinking cursor at the end of your […]
Tweet This week I shared a story of a major writing setback when I outran my own scene list. I’ve also told stories before about losing pages, chapters, books. The writer’s life is tragedy. Partly, that’s because of the unpredictable nature of the process. Mostly, it’s because writers spend so much of their time wallowing […]
Tweet I’m a big believer in prewriting. I design my stories, building them with care before I even start writing. Somebody once said even the best battle plan only lasts until the first shot is fired (or something to that effect). It certainly applies to writing. Stories change in the telling. It’s just part of […]
Tweet Yesterday I talked about some of the pitfalls of chasing inspiration, and the importance of finishing projects. That might seem like a premature topic, less than a week into a month-long marathon, but Week One is the foundation or your noveling month. That’s why I was thanking Courtney yesterday for her comments on Wednesday. […]
Tweet I’m quite lucky to be surrounded by the kind of creative talent I am, and quite conniving to get all that talent working on my behalf. That’s something I think (and am told) fairly often, but in this case it’s because of yesterday’s guest post. With no prompting whatsoever, Courtney wrote a perfect introduction […]
Tweet Well, as I said last Thursday, in light of my ridiculously busy fall schedule, I’ve been toying with the idea of dropping my weekly Technical Writing series here at Unstressed Syllables. At the same time, I said I thought I’d probably have last week’s series for you this week. I don’t. I received a […]
Tweet This month I’ve been talking about NaNoWriMo, and how I bullied my dad and sister into writing their first novels, and my own glorious experience writing Gods Tomorrow a couple years back. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of writing a novel. Well…actually, that’s not true. There’s definitely another thrill that matches it: Holding […]
Tweet This week we’re talking about becoming a better writer through your reading, and yesterday I talked about a college class I’m taking on that very topic. So far we’ve read How to Train Your Dragon, Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, The Cinderella Deal, and First Lady. I don’t really read much young […]
Tweet This week I stopped complaining about restrictive writing rules in favor of more generous advice. It’s really a continuation of the same theme, though. Write what you know. and Tell your readers what they need to know. The trick to both of those, really, is knowing what you know (and, of course, what you […]
Tweet Yesterday I told a story about throwing my daughter into the deep end of the pool. It wasn’t intentional, but it was astonishingly effective. Funny enough, I’d been thinking about that metaphor a lot lately. In the last year I’ve been thrown into the deep end at work, building incredibly challenging documents on impossible […]
