Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! This week marks the achievement of a blogging milestone for me. This is the 52nd week in a row I have posted a blog on Tuesday. Hooray! Now, blogging isn’t the powerhouse it once was in terms of garnering engagement, especially in my simple words on a page …
Tag: Persistence
The Writing Life: Promises kept, with a tiny caveat
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! It is very cold here, and I write to delay going out into brittle, shard-like sunlight to shovel my drive. Being stabbed in my wincing eye by too-bright light is infinitely preferable to having to shovel in a storm, however, a brutal necessity I have only had to …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Promises kept, with a tiny caveat
The Writing Life: Acknowledging the slowdown
Hello my friends and the occasional relative! Today is a mea culpa kind of day. I’ve done some more tinkering, but have not significantly advanced in my last pass over the new novel. I’m stuck at the reworking of a conversation: I thought I had a correct angle for the insertion of needed extras, but …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Acknowledging the slowdown
9 Problems and a new beginning
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! A new opening has been written and integrated into the manuscript in progress. Callooh and callay and all that. No seriously. I am genuinely frabjous about it. I mean it didn’t grow unwieldy, it seems pretty elegant in terms of adding depth to character interactions and will help …
855 Problems
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! So yes, I have compiled some feedback files and have 855 problems to address, aside from the need to significantly upgrade the opening chapters, which are much as they were when I first vomited them out in order to get started, and adjust some aspects of the finale …
71 Problems
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Yes, that number has loomed larger. But fear not, many are more like markers than problems, placeholders to remind me where to make consistency fixes, which shall be removed with great joy in large chunks as their time to be resolved arrives. In short, I am making a …
The Slaves and The Djinn: Final edit-as-I-go draft update?
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I write this before I have finished my writing for these days off, with Chapters 31 and 32 written, so I am 96.96 recurring% of the way to completion of this edited-as-I-go draft. Cheers Ernest! Still no graphic representation. Except I have not really edited from 29 on, …
Continue reading The Slaves and The Djinn: Final edit-as-I-go draft update?
The Writing Life: Thinking about Analogy
Today, when not drowning in work, I was thinking about analogies and metaphors and dusty tables. That is all. I also decided that I would set myself a small goal, and if I met it, I’d write a blog saying I had met a small goal. Because that is the kind of thrilling hi-jinks people …
Why I Write Fantasy: Hamster Wheel Edition
It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to crank out a blog of an evening. I completed the line edit in double time, missing deadline by a day, but I’ll take it, and my editor is a forgiving soul, for which I am grateful. The essential truth of why I write fantasy – …
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, …
Roderick T. Macdonald 