It is a hard thing to finish a book. Not the hardest thing in the world by a long chalk, but, if you've tried writing a book, and then got feedback, edited, re-edited and then polished beyond editing into obsession, well then maybe you've a small idea of how hard it is to finish a …
Category: Books
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: Chopsticks and Dust
Sometimes you just have to start writing in order to get anywhere. This is another made up as I go along blog - welcome to spontaneity land! I am still editing. That basement full of dust covered tables? I'm working on them with chopsticks, one tiny clump at a time. I can't say it's ideal, …
Why I Write Fantasy: To Explore the Meta
To be honest, in writing The Killer and The Dead I didn’t set out to explore aspects of metafiction, which I define as fiction that interrogates itself, and that can operate in a separate space in the reader’s mind beyond merely the ingestion and understanding of the narrative: it just kind of happened. In meta …
Why I Write Fantasy: Death and Freedom
I'm not publishing the blog I wrote earlier today. Didn't quite capture what I wanted to say. So instead I'm freehanding this one, not even a spellchecker to save me! I started writing fantasy, as I've said elsewhere, to create worlds of my own to escape into, after enjoyng the sensation of entering into other …
Editing as a cuesport
This is going to be brief, because I should be editing, not blogging. I refer you to this blog. It is far more true now for me than it was a couple of weeks ago! But, here's my quick thought. Anyone who is any good at cuesports, be it pool, snooker, or billiards; often has …
The Writing Life: Choices in Art
In my recent blog on Bram Stoker’s Dracula I threw in a line that while viewing that film multiple times I chose not to see its flaws. I could, if I wanted, pick away at what some might perceive as problems in the movie, but I chose not to, because I’d much rather enjoy those …
The Writing Life: Gathering Your Thoughts, or Dealing with Developmental Editorial Feedback
So I received my developmental notes for The Killer and The Dead last week. These notes were a collection of thoughtful comments and suggestions on plot, structure, pacing, writing, setting, and character. Plus a ton of in-text comments on specific aspects of the book, good and bad, pointing out places where improvements could be made, …
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 …
Why I Write Fantasy: To Write the Classic Non-Human Races, in Other Books, Later
In the fantasy of my youth non-human races were always part of the magical formula that took me from the mundane here, to the fantastical there. Talking animals, creatures from greek myth, folklore figures brought to life, all of them were part of that secret world just around the corner and over the hill …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: To Write the Classic Non-Human Races, in Other Books, Later
