Part of the 2015 Clarion West Write-a-thon series! Sponsor me, sponsor another writer, or learn more about the Write-a-thon For my second Write-a-thon topic, I want to tackle the last thought in my notebook: Sometimes I like my work. Sometimes I hate it. I don’t know which time I’m correct.Continue Reading
Memory is funny. I would have sworn that the first time I tried my own do-it-yourself Clarion West Write-a-thon was the first year I applied, but didn’t get in — 2002. But I also keep notebooks, and discovered that my memory is faulty. My first “Clarion Rejects Write-a-thon” was actuallyContinue Reading
Part of the Clarion West 2014 Write-a-thon series. Sponsor me, sponsor another writer, or learn more about the Write-a-thon My final essay is about the most important and career-changing thing that I learned at Clarion West: how to approach my own work from the meta direction. This lesson is stillContinue Reading
Part of the Clarion West 2014 Write-a-thon series. Sponsor me, sponsor another writer, or learn more about the Write-a-thon Did you know that the essence of story is conflict? I mean — I probably knew that, actually, even before Clarion West. I’m sure I’ve (correctly) identified the central conflict inContinue Reading
Part of the Clarion West 2014 Write-a-thon series. Sponsor me, sponsor another writer, or learn more about the Write-a-thon (As a side note — I’m not sure my “avoid social media except for Sundays” thing is going to work, when I ended up spending most of my Sunday seeing TheContinue Reading
This recent Slate article [Save the movie!] suggests that an over-reliance on the beat sheet from Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat” books is ruining Hollywood movies, but I think it’s completely wrong. The problem with dull blockbusters isn’t that they are following Snyder’s beat sheet — it’s that they aren’tContinue Reading
A mixed success. I successfully wrote every day for at least half an hour, except for Tuesday — I was still busy setting up the new website, and so the morning got away from me, then I went to the Elizabeth Hand reading, which then turned into an emotional farewellContinue Reading
Internal dialog on a Saturday morning Hey, it’s Saturday of Clarion West Week 2 and you know what that means! Fourth of July weekend? No, you have to submit that story you wrote. Oh. Right. I… I promised to do that, didn’t I? Yes, and you have to. But —Continue Reading
I have successfully written a brand new short story that I don’t (yet) think is entirely horrible. It’s science fiction but it could be fantasy. Victory 1! But I have not yet overcome submitaphobia. That’s okay. My goal is to, over six weeks, write and submit three stories. I haven’tContinue Reading
First failing: writing a post every day of the write-a-thon. I was totally going to do that. Then I didn’t. Second failing: getting much writing done. Actually that might not be a failing. I have been in novel-writing mode for a couple of years and am trying to switch gearsContinue Reading
When I went to Clarion West, Paul drew Goth House comics for me.Continue Reading
When I went to Clarion West, Paul drew Goth House comics for me.Continue Reading
When I went to Clarion West, Paul drew Goth House comics for me.Continue Reading