December 2011

I suppose I ought to do some kind of end-of-the-year post.

/ 10 Comments / Natter / By

…except I don’t really feel like it. This year has been both heaven and hell in various ways. I got a day job which has made me financially stable — and it’s been eating into my ability to write. I published one book and am looking forward to two more next year… but I recently realized I’ve sold only one short story, and had none published this year — a record low since I started writing seriously. I threw a bigass party on the other side of the country, and attended a bigass party on the other side of the […]

I suppose I ought to do some kind of end-of-the-year post. KEEP READING

Carving a New World

/ 17 Comments / Natter, On Writing / By

Ah, the holidays. That lovely time when lists begin to dominate my life: holiday shopping lists, menus for family meals, packing lists for shipping and travel, eight million flavors of to do. I’m sure all of you reading this post, in any culture can relate. But there’s one list I’m working on right now that I suspect only the fellow writers among you will fully grok. Here’s what it would look like if I jotted it down on a sticky note: !!! Synop Characters Plot? Test Chapter 1 Test Chapter 2 Proof of Concept R&D (books and stuff) R&D (practical;

Carving a New World KEEP READING

A Writer’s Education

/ 16 Comments / On Writing, Rantage, WTF World? / By

Apologies in advance; not gonna talk about writing for the moment. Instead I’m going to talk about the writing life, in a way. See, I took the GRE on Saturday. I did OK. Astounding on the verbal and abysmal on the quantitative, as I expected. I’ve been using my verbal skills steadily and with increasing intensity throughout my adult life, after all, and I haven’t done combinatorics in 20 years. No amount of short-term cramming can really make up for that, and I didn’t expect it to. All I really wanted to do was not embarrass myself, and I think

A Writer’s Education KEEP READING

The (not really) Deafening Silence

/ 1 Comment / Natter / By

Apologies for being quiet here. I’m busy a) studying for the GRE, because I’m thinking about getting an MFA, and b) talking elsewhere, which has absorbed most of the free chat time I had available. Per the latter, I’m on a mailing list with some other authors, constituting the Locus Roundtable. Basically, our moderator (usually Karen Burnham) throws out an interesting question. Then she lets us do what writers do best (aside from writing), which is blather on about whatever tickles our fancy, while she collects the answers. The latest question actually spawned several subthreads of discussion, which will all

The (not really) Deafening Silence KEEP READING

Scroll to Top