Time for a Break

As creative professionals living in a chaotic world, we can feel a lot of pressure to complete every project, accept every opportunity, and allow our personal and professional lives to cross over more than they should. Today, I’m telling you that I can’t do it all.

What I Meant to Say Was…

Listening to the world around you – yes, perhaps more than is polite – is a surefire way to realistically represent the world around you, no matter the setting, time period or characters. 

What’s the Point (of View)?

Let’s delve a little into point of view choice between first, second and third, and see what influencers, challenges and story elements will help us make our decisions about which to use. 

Beware the Mary-Sue

Before we can avoid writing her, or accidentally scare ourselves into a corner and avoid writing women altogether, it’s important to ask: What exactly is a Mary Sue, and why don’t we want one?  

Step One: Remove Transmission

Now, of course, removing a transmission is a wildly complicated and difficult process, a little like saying Step One: Animate the monster or Step One: Walk on the moon. In my family, the term has become synonymous with comically difficult tasks– such as writing a book.

On the Write Track

But it is also important to find a healthy, sustainable balance between the business and creative sides of your work, or you can find yourself wasting a lot of precious time on to do items with low ROI.

So where do you begin?

You Can’t Trust a Muse

This idea of the muse, of some catch-all messenger of creativity is delightful and fantastical. It’s also completely made up.

New News

I learned the fundamental lesson that we cannot get our news from a single source, that we must, as readers and consumers of media, be willing to analyze the information we take in, to cross-reference it against credible sources, to do a little bit of the hard work ourselves.

Get Series-ous: Seven Things to Do Before Starting Your Series

Though it has its many positives, there are certain pitfalls any writer can run into when writing a series. Taking these precautionary steps in advance will help you to minimize the challenges down the line and, hopefully, to produce better books.