Not me personally, but my office…following the Great Computer Crash and the I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Covid Scare and the Attack of the Gravity Monster (still healing from that last one), and with the help of the amazing Kate Shull, I am now in possession of the Boxes of Delight. Two new computers (one for me, one for husband, Read More…
Tag: tools for writing
Sometimes the Brain Surprises…
I wrote about this the other day (and then forgot to post it until the day after I wrote it, DUH) over on Paksworld, but it’s a general enough “How WriterBrains Work” story that some of you may be interested, too. As mentioned, I’ve started Book II of the Horngard group, and am presently just Read More…
Second Revision Draft
Second revision draft is now on chapter 22. This book, thanks to the years of not writing and brain foggy stuff, may take more than one run through the “Construction Phase” to get things right, but every thing so far is willing to be nudged in the right direction. My metaphors for the problems are Read More…
Titles
Someone on Twitter this morning asked a writing group “What is the significance of your title? Could it be something else?” Hmmm. But my NewBook has no title yet, so let’s talk titles. The title of a book has different roles, as seen by the writer, the editor/publisher, and the reader. Let’s look first at Read More…
Finish Line in Sight
This is the point at which, in the old days, would lead to two to four weeks of flat out writing all day and half the night, every day–no stopping, eating only what appeared at my side or (occasionally) on the kitchen table, as I made the final dash to the end of the first/rough Read More…
Some Thoughts on WriterBrain, Second Rock
Dorothy L. Sayers, who wrote some of my favorite books, also wrote essays I’ve found very useful, especially her writing on the doctrine of the Trinity and its relation to creative writing and the kinds of problems that result from what she called “Scalene Trinities.” For the non-Christians (which I wasn’t when I first read Read More…
Some Thoughts on WriterBrain, First Rock (with a few decorations)
On another site, on which I’d written a long comment about the statement “ignorance is bliss” someone complimented my writing (always pleasant to hear) and thought my “story-writing brain” was completely back in service. Which–though much improved–it’s not. That’s not a venue in which to explain how many different components and levels a fiction writing Read More…
Fast Tips for Tightening Your Writing
Whether it’s a letter, essay, short story, or longer pieces, here are some easy ways to make it tighter, snappier, and (if you’re up against a word limit) shorter. Go active: change passive voice (“He was hit by a truck”) to active voice (“A truck hit him.”) Watch for sneaky forms of passive by scanning Read More…
Revision: Firing Up the Chainsaw
Like everything else in writing, there are many ways to approach revision, and I’ve written quite a bit about the process elsewhere. But every writer and every project has unique challenges. For NewBook, I’m choosing a slower (since I have no deadline) but thorough and reliable method to cope with its nature and history. I Read More…
What Writers Argue About
Writers argue about everything. We hold different views on what other writers *should* write about, what topics are too something (ordinary, fantastic, political, politically naive, mundane, exotic, narrow, broad…) or not enough something (same list), how writers should handle certain topics, if writers should use some hot-button term, whether a phrase in common use 150 Read More…