Hi Folks, This will be an extra blog post. On 1 September I’ll be back to posting nuts and bolts how-to information for writing. I’ve come to see my daily journal, the other major blog post from this site, as eminently more important than this one. In it, I outline my day (the day of a professional writer) and write a Topic of the Night on most nights. I also generally pass along whatever important tidbits … Read more
The Day Rolled out just before 3 a.m. Back to reality. Still recovering from the camping trip. For a full day and the better part of a night, Dan and I were alternating between the low of being exhausted and the high of repeated adrenaline rushes. That sort of thing wore me out when I was 30. I’m a little older than that now. (grin) So I messed around the house a bit, went for a … Read more
Happy 4th of July Independence Day to everyone. Hope it’s an enjoyable one for you. The Day Slept ’til almost 3 this morning. Woohoo! But a little late to work. Okay, first, a very brief announcement. Beginning with tomorrow’s post (so July 4), this particular post will go out at 7 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. As it is right now, sometimes this post cuts into my real writing time. Can’t have that. I wrote the … Read more
Hi Folks, Dean Wesley Smith is the professional long-term fiction writer whom I consider my mentor. He’s made his living with his fiction for over 3o years and has well over 100 novels published through traditional publishers. This is back before traditional publishers lost their minds and made their contracts completely one-sided. I emailed Dean about my most recent (at the time, back in November, 2014) short story, “Saving the Grenlow”: “Seriously doubt I’m up to … Read more
A long while back, I posted that if you’re writing and you get bogged down, you should just write the next sentence, then write the next sentence, and so on. Soon you’ll be back in the flow of your story and you can forge ahead. There’s one proviso—that “next sentence” should come directly from your subconscious (creative) mind. In other words, you shouldn’t force it and think about it and make it read just so. You … Read more