As I am writing this, I’m getting close to a hand-off point, when I’ll have just wrapped up one of my latest SSCS’s (the Serial Stream-of-Consciousness Stories that I work on periodically as a break from my more directed writing) and will then be needing to add a new SSCS onto my docket (I usually have three running at any given time). That begs the question: What should I use as my seed for the next one? The story ideas…
Okay, it’s time for another post about writing (because I like to write about writing, apparently). This one is about story ideas! Story ideas are lots of fun and can feel really precious, but are actually pretty darned easy to come by. This, of course, is not news. It seems like nearly every writer’s blog I’ve read has some variation on the idea that story ideas are the easy part of writing (the actual writing is way more work!), or…
I seem to have a weird pattern forming here of luminescent kraken…
Okay. We’re closing in on the end of the year. Which is the first year I’ve had this blog. Which I started in large part because I wanted a place to be able to talk about my writing (and my garden). You’ve seen my garden, so now, the least I can do is tell you how my writing’s gone this year. The short answer is: Not as great as I was hoping. But, I didn’t do nothing. So, I’ll give…
They say write the book you want to read. The problem with that is, when you’re having a bad day and things just aren’t jelling, you really just want to be able to sit down and read that book, not have to go through the slog of writing it.
Anxious Disclaimer: Okay, so this post may likely come off as really self-involved. But, well, this is a blog, and lots of blogs are pretty self-involved, almost by definition. Also, I know perfectly well there will be lots more self-involved blog posts to come. So, I’m hemming and hawing here at the top probably because this has to do with my writing, and writing has been a dream of mine for a really long time, and that makes it lots…
So! Did you catch that? I just published a short story (technically, at just over 10,000 words, some people would call ‘Because the Desert is a Great, Broad Beast of Memory’ a novelette – but I’m not sure I’m ready to consider myself quite that fancy). Now, you might be asking: Published? Where? Answer: Here. On my blog. This really does count as publishing. Merriam-Webster defines ‘publish’ as “to disseminate to the public” (and it defines ‘disseminate’ as “to spread…
Okay, I said last writing post that I like revisions. And recently I experienced a good example of the importance (for me*) of Targeted, Mid-drafting Revisions. There are lots of kinds of revisions, and I mostly adore them all (what’s not to love about effective problem-solving?), and so I thought it would be nice to share an example of this particular kind. * Important disclaimer: I don’t want to try to give any instruction about when a writer should or…
Things I love about my ridiculous SSCS stories – Item 1: I get to write sentences like this: Well, what did the underwear know about it?
Okay. So. I’d really like to write a blog post on something to do with writing and/or my stories. But it seems…like it would be inappropriate at this particular juncture? I’ve got nothing published so far, except for half of my first Serial-Steam-of-Consciousness Story (SSCS; on this blog). And realistically it’s going to be years before any of my work is noticeably more available than that. (Okay, to be perfectly accurate: In high school, 2 or 3 of my poems…