Category: Creativity
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Emerging from the (Writerly) Desert
Not everything moves in a straight line. And that is especially true with writing.
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Unfinished Projects
I read in a book recently that an experiment was done that showed that unfinished projects take up more mental bandwidth than finished projects. The scientists tested this by allowing their subjects to finish some puzzles but not others in a certain allotment of time. The subjects continued to think about the unfinished puzzles afterwards.…
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Commitment
Twenty plus years of marriage. A teenage daughter. Creeping towards my black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Waking up early every day to write fiction. Or sometimes just stare at the blank page. Now testing Seth Godin’s idea of blogging daily. Sharing my thoughts. Always hardest to begin something new, and to commit to it,…
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My 5,000 Words Per Hour Experiment, or Write Faster Fool
In which I experiment with a method to write faster…
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Changing my mind about writing to market
How this stubborn writer changed his mind about writing to market.
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Understanding Openings: Black City Saint
I get drawn into the mysteries and conflicts in Richard Knaak’s urban fantasy novel, Black City Saint.
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Understanding Openings: The Scourge of the Betrayer
I dig into the opening of the Scourge of the Betrayer to find out how Jeff Salyards sets up this excellent dark fantasy adventure.
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Best books for writers: My top three
When you ask folks what are the best books for writers, odds are you someone’s going to mention Stephen King’s On Writing, but that modern classic doesn’t make my top three.
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Understanding Openings: The Girl with All the Gifts
I look at the opening chapter of The Girl With All the Gifts to figure out what’s working.
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Top exercises to counter sitting all day for writers – Part 1
Writers sit for hours at the keyboard. But too much sitting is bad for your health. Here are some ideas for exercises to counter sitting all day.
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The Trouble with Trilogies
Fantasy literature is defined by trilogies. This was probably directly a result of Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings, a formative cornerstone of the genre. But I’ve been having a problem with trilogies I’ve been reading lately: nothing happens in the first book. Trilogies and Fantasy Tolkein’s famous series was never meant to be a…
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All black in a sea of white
Advice in the indie writing industry is seductive. Don’t let it steer you away from a meaningful writing life.
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I swear I wasn’t just lying around the beach
All has been pretty quiet on the blog front recently. And while a number of you may be aware that I spent the holidays on the warm sands and in the warmer seas of Mexico, I have not just been relaxing since my last post. These past six weeks or so, I have been working…
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Surviving NaNoWriMo: A Guest Post by Michael R. Fletcher
Solid advice from Michael R. Fletcher, author of Beyond Redemption, on how to not only survive NaNoWriMo but to really get a novel finished and ready for publication.
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Where to Source Images for Your Website
As an indie author one of the challenges is finding images you can use. Here are five places to source images for your website.
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Southeast Asian Fungal Grimdark
Ideas have been milling around for my next fantasy series and they are beginning to take form: a Southeast Asian-inspired setting, a fungal magic system and a grimdark flavor. Come along for the ride.
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Stages of Study: Orientation
Beyond my interests in the practices of writing and studying Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I am intrigued by the stages of learning. In this post I examine orientation – the first stage.
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Some days everything runs like a well-oiled machine…
Don’t be a fool like me. Back up your computer today before a catastrophic drive failure!