will finish this darn story

By Wednesday. It’s a short story, entitled “The Watcher.”
Yes, I’m still “blocked.” But I’m finishing it anyway, even if it’s terrible in the end. Because really, it’s time to move on.
One thing about the current protagonist is that he reminds me of the protagonist of a story I wrote previously. Not the characterization, since they are drawn very differently, [...]

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writing space

Today I have a post up at Adventures in Writing about having a room of one’s own to write in.

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don’t let this happen to you

Live and learn, they say.
A couple of days ago I was organizing the files on my computer, deleting duplicates and anything else I thought was just taking up space. Yeah, well. A folder called Recent Changes (or something like that) was full of duplicates of files that I’d recently changed. All the files that are important to me are documents and [...]

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on heroes and villains

Andrew Rosenberg over at The WriteRunner has a thought-provoking post about the quality that most distinguishes heroes from villains in fiction. He decides it’s something simpler than good vs. evil, and he uses examples from real life to show what he means.
It’s made me think about my own heroes and villains from a new perspective, and even more so since I’m [...]

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the dream-story

Last Saturday I wrote a post about dreams over at Adventures in Writing. I was wondering whether dreams are ever a valuable source of inspiration or ideas for writers of fiction. This post was prompted by a dream I’d had the day before, which I thought (and still think) might be the seed of a short story.
Well, I haven’t written this story. Not [...]

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revisions

My revisions end up being longer than the original, though I know many writers say that a draft always need to be cut significantly. I do cut, but I add more than I cut, apparently.
I’d like to hear from other writers. Is your revised material on average longer or shorter than your original draft?

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helium

I joined Helium this week. If you don’t know Helium, it’s a site that pays writers to write and post articles in competition with other writers.
I’ve written a few articles so far, but I haven’t submitted any creative writing over there.
I’m only now getting used to the site, and so as of now I don’t have an [...]

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market response times

I just withdrew a short story from a market that had been holding it for 14 months. Fourteen months! Now, while I do understand that editors are busy, and I certainly know that they are in no way begging writers for stories, I still think that response times of months are too long, response times of six to twelve months [...]

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gender differences in writing?

A while back I mentioned in a post that the majority of my POV characters tend to be male. And so it is with my two most recent stories. I don’t know why this is, other than to say that the character whose point of view I use is simply the one that seems right for [...]

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writing for publication vs. writing for oneself

I’m wondering about the value of writing a story which I find personally compelling, but which (based on my experience trying to sell such stoires in the past) I suspect is not marketable.
I do think that for someone who is focused on publication, writing time (scarce to begin with, and filled with interruptions) needs to [...]

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