Richard Steinberg at StoryTellersUnplugged has a great article on why writers write: The thirty-seven writers in my address book (along with me) are a pretty diverse bunch. We live in five countries spread across two hemispheres, to say nothing of a bunch of us scattered throughout AmeriCanada. The youngest is nineteen, the oldest ninety-three. Male […]
Publicity photos taken (and because I didn't get a chance to clean the make-up off pre-surgery, I found mascara in my ear this morning), and home from the surgery, which thankfully I slept through (the upside to being sensitive to drugs is that a dose which should make you drowsy in fact puts you straight […]
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I hate the copy-edited manuscript, and copyediting, and if I never quibble with myself again over where a comma should sit, or how best to conjugate a precise verb in a particular instance, it will be far too soon. In the meantime, have a quote I love: […]
A real human is somebody who feels and who expresses his or her feelings. This may sound easy. It isn't. A lot of people think or believe or know what they feel — but that's thinking or believing or knowing: not feeling. And being real is feeling — not just knowing or believing or thinking. […]
Proofreading: the process perhaps best described as "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Oy vey. The start of this novel really is problematic. I would cry "What was I thinking?" except I suspect the answer is that I wasn't thinking. Or rather, I was thinking too much, and not finding the answers I needed, and therefore reduced to feeling my way. I'm hoping that once I sort out […]
Joss Whedon on the gender inequality How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s […]
Today, all I want to do is watch Garden State. Sadly, I do not have a copy of it handy, and so looks like I'll be thwarted in that want yet another day. Also today, after an hour and a half spent fighting for words during which I spectacularly achieved zero, count them zero, I […]
Max woke me this morning staaaaahrving and demanding breakfast. (For reference, it was 7:20. I normally feed him at 7:00. Clearly, he was suffering.) I staggered upright and upstairs and discovered, lo and behold, he'd actually already been fed a hearty meal. 'S just that he thought it wasn't quite enough, and maybe I could […]
Kelly Link, resident editor at the OWW, has written a letter to workshop members, which Charlie has posted at his blog. The only kind of critique that I worry about, in the long run, is the tendency of a workshop to sand off all the interesting edges from a writer.