Another rapid freehand blog today. Which means five plus edits after publication - my apologies to those of you who get version one mailed to you! My face is hot. I think because I've been talking for hours. To myself. I've been reading The Killer and The Dead aloud, and I'm here to say (thankfully …
Category: Advice
The Writing Life: Trust Your Editor and Yourself When Dusting Glass Tables
Hello, and Happy New Year, folks! (I'll do a New Year's thought another day.) The copy edit of The Killer and The Dead continues in my basement of dust and glass tables. It ain’t for sissies. But the book is awesome, if I say so myself. I have continued to do 10, or 20, or …
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The Writing Life: Reading Your Own Writing
Ah, my writing holiday is almost over, as I get the developmental edits on The Killer and The Dead back tomorrow. I have one more night of imagining I’ll get a note of stunned awe, and thanks for writing such a thing of searing beauty. And writers out there, you do hope for that kind …
The Writing Life: Taking a Writing Holiday
So I had this plan (not for a giant wooden badger) to start writing the first draft of my next book while The Killer and The Dead is off getting developmentally edited. You know, use the time, maximize my word counts, get the first few chapters of The Slavegirl and the Traveller banged out and …
The Writing Life: Writing as an Exercise
Part of writing is persisting when you’re not feeling particularly up for it: you’re tired, distracted, unsure, stuck, maybe even bored and wanting to move on, but no, you’ve got to write that next page. Sometimes I’ll just go to bed. Other times I’ll get a cup of tea, play a few racks of pool, …
The Writing Life: Sometimes Sleep is the Answer
The list of things to do in the writing life never seems to get smaller. Not only that, but as you move forward and learn more about what you can do to improve your writing and further your career, you can’t help but run into things you probably should have done earlier. Much earlier. It …
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The Writing Life: Finding Yourself Involved in a Comic Con
So a while ago you will recall I chatted on Jesper Schmidt’s YouTube channel about Morality in World building. See it here, if you missed it! My blog series on morality in fantasy starts here. Well, he mentioned that it was not a topic he’d ever come across when discussing fantasy fiction before, so I …
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Why I Write Fantasy: The Recurring Ideas That Won’t Let Go
I write fantasy stories because ideas for them keep popping into my head, almost always when I am in no position to write them down or record them. Life’s ironic like that. When I’m half-awake is a classic, that’s when ideas for dramatic situations come to me, cliffhangers without the set up that my still …
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The Writing Life: Doubts Part 5: How I Made My Peace with Doubt (Or: How I Reduced Doubt to the Guerilla War Option Only. Or: Be The Shark)
That’s a lengthly title. But for me an accurate one. I have not defeated doubt, I have not cast it into the outer darkness to lie impotent and weeping. I have, like the demon in my book, cut it down to a manageable size, and reduced it to fighting me at the page by page …
The Writing Life: Hey, Aren’t You Writing a Book?
Why yes, yes I am. Except I had this deadline for a first draft that expired in January, unmet. I think the gods are mocking me for answering a goodreads question about writer’s block and saying “I don’t really suffer from it, but here’s what I do when it kind of strikes…” Bazinga! It struck, …
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Roderick T. Macdonald 