"Start at the beginning, continue until the end." It seems like really simple advice. Start writing at the beginning. Finish writing at the end. A lot of novels disregard this with in media res beginnings, anachronic order, flashbacks and flash-forwards. Like all rules, it can be broken, but today, I'm going to talk about the 'simple' stories. These ones start at the beginning and continue until the end with maybe an occasional flashback or six. This leaves us with a question that ... Read more »
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We’re not yet dead – may as well wed
In the immortal words of Granny Weatherwax: I aten't dead yet. This blog is always going to be quiet in January due to my day job, but this January also had the extra layers of sorting out wedding planning and going to see a local production of Spamalot (awesome show, and Front Row Center Players did an amazing job of it). I also finished the academic portion of my professional designation, which brings us to today's topic: Time Management and doing what you love. One of my colleagues ... Read more »
Goals: NaNoWriMo, 1K1HR, and the 20k Month
Five days ago I wrote the last exam for my professional certification. While this is hugely meaningful to me, its main relevance to the Pen is that I now have the time to get back to writing. Doing so is not as easy as one would wish. It's been months since I've written regularly, so I've been looking at various motivation methods and drivers. NaNoWriMo is a good example: all around the world, people start with the goal of a 50,000 word month and go. My last completed novel started as a ... Read more »
Catching back up: sequels and breaks in writing
Marshall Maresca, another of the Mighty Agent's clients, explains here why he isn't doing NaNoWriMo this year. His methodology for story creation is notably different than mine—and that renders NaNoWriMo less useful for him. Two years back, it was NaNoWriMo that got me going on an idea that had been floating around my head for a while. I have a lot of story ideas running around my head at any given moment (I can list five—no, six—relatively quickly. Three story ideas are in universes where ... Read more »
Words: The Importance of
My last story involving the US Government—ONSET—was based around a SWAT-style team who showed up after due process was written off. This story is about the front-line supernatural cops in the same setting. The conceit of the story is that every US Government branch has an 'Omicron Office' to give supernaturals the same legal process as mundanes. So now, of course, I have to know what said processes are. One of the reasons I like the internet: I google "United States procedure for issuing ... Read more »
Dual-wielding and Human Wave Science Fiction
Given the tagline of this website, an alternative to dual-wielding seems appropriate: Arsenal Firearms has created the first double-barreled .45 pistol. I'm not sure I'd want to fire the thing, but I have a few characters who could. It is a more practical weapon that I originally envisaged one group of characters carrying—let's just leave it at "Metalstorm Pistol". Secondly, there's been an idea sweeping the blogs of the authors I follow. A manifesto, the originator of the idea calls it. ... Read more »