I walked in the rain this evening. It reminded me of Scotland: a bracing cold, but invigorating, my memory choosing to omit the reality of Scottish rain, pissing relentlessly down, soaking you through when walks in the rain weren’t for pleasure, but a miserable necessity. I grew up in the rain. I wonder now why …
The Writing Life: The Pudding has been Proofed.
Hello folks, more time has passed than expected once again. Between blog posts I mean. The standard flow of time has otherwise been maintained, at least in my vicinty, as far as I can tell. Observational bias and all that. Anyway, updates. The Long Road to publication continues. Strangely enough my proofreads turned into another …
Continue reading The Writing Life: The Pudding has been Proofed.
The Writing Life: SPFBO 2020 and an update or three.
Good evening, whatever timezone you may be in. Quick updates: Proofing run one is done. I have made some minor corrections based on feedback, and then, jaunting down a word-search rabbit hole, I noticed a thing. I'm fixing the thing, (and it is a small thing) before proofing run two begins. I have finalised the …
Continue reading The Writing Life: SPFBO 2020 and an update or three.
The Writing Life: Missed Updates
No blogs since August? I knew it had been a while, but it is a surprise to see so much time has elapsed, when almost every weekend I have considered writing an update. You know, I finished the verbal read-through, I finished the resolution of my last notes (hahahaha!) on continuity, I finished a proof …
The Writing Life: The Power of the Spoken Word
This is an update. After losing/significantly depleting my GAF as previously described, I decided to do my usual (i.e. done once before) final step of reading my book out loud to myself as a way to interrogate each sentence and catch egregious typos. This is now done. Yay. I fixed some sentences here and there, …
Continue reading The Writing Life: The Power of the Spoken Word
The Writing Life: Losing my GAF
I have recently been watching booktube videos addressed to authors: readers expressing their opinions on what they do and do not like in fantasy, what they would like to see in new books, and what just won’t cut it anymore. Of course these are just opinions, and if an author tried to satisfy every desire …
The Writing Life: Ain’t No Way But The Hard Way
So it has been a while. I was going to call this Breaking the Silence II, but I decided to share this song with you instead. When I am in the guts of a pool match, and I or my team are a long way behind, I think of that song, and dig in to …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Ain’t No Way But The Hard Way
Why I Write Fantasy: 30 Minute Fiction Edition
Okay, I have a stopwatch, and I'm not afraid to use it. I'm going to give myself 30 minutes, no more or less, and I will stop when the alarm goes off and post the result. Check out this post to get some background on the piece I shall be presenting to you. Ok, time to …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: 30 Minute Fiction Edition
Why I Write Fantasy: To be Stymied by a Power Outage.
All right then, so I'm going to have a go at belting out something that might approach an idea I've been toying with: to write fictional commentaries on my next novel, The Killer and The Dead. Now before you decide I have disappeared entirely up my own fundament, TKATD is structured as a first person narrative …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: To be Stymied by a Power Outage.
The Writing Life: Sunday Night Notification – free book giveaway!
Hello everyone, So yes, the Thursday rapid fire writing attempt did not happen - work and pool league (one I'd forgotten about) got in the way. Maybe tomorrow - I'd like to try writing a fictional report off the cuff and see what comes out. (I'll explain more tomorrow, honest!) So today is just a …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Sunday Night Notification – free book giveaway!
Roderick T. Macdonald 