My Agent Told Me To Make A Blog

I'm going to slow down my blogging for the holidays. I've got reading to catch up on, writing to do, and I've run out of stockpiled blog posts. Instead of cranking out a bunch of short, poorly thought out posts to keep up, I'm going to take a month or so to schedule a new stockpile of quality posts. I might also buy a cello. I'll be back in January with writing updates, cool setting pictures, and some recent reads!

Anyone who's ever had their writing critiqued knows that critiquers come with varying skill levels and focus on differing story aspects. But holy moly is there ever a difference between industry professionals and amateurs. First, let's talk a little bit about critiques in general, for a basis. 1. The Reactive Critique Anyone, regardless of skill level, can provide excellent feedback in the form of "this is how I felt while reading." Points of confusion, boredom, what they were looking forward to, what they thought would or wouldn't happen. Honestly this is generally the most helpful kind of critique, and requires absolutely no knowledge of writing technique or experience with critiquing. 2. The Suggestive Critique This is where we see huge differences in critiquers, largely due to the subjectivity of writing and reading. When people take that step from "this is how I felt" to "this is how I think you could fix it," that can lead to won...

Neutron stars are fascinating. Their most distinctive feature is how dense they are. The internet told me once that a spoonful of neutron star could weigh a billion tons (or maybe it was tonnes). To quote Wikipedia (links and all)... A neutron star is the collapsed core of a large star (10–29 solar masses). Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars known to exist. [1] With a radius on the order of 10 km , they can, however, have a mass of about twice that of the Sun . This is not a neutron star, sorry. It's here for atmosphere. And because Wikipedia is more articulate than me trying to paraphrase the same information, Wikipedia also has this to say about their origins: They result from the supernova explosion of a massive star , combined with gravitational collapse , that compresses the core past the white dwarf star density to that of atomic nuclei . If you're like me and can't resist all those Wikipedia links, I have to say this spacey stuff is real...

Writing is a shockingly intimate thing. Whenever I've gotten to know someone through writing, I've never been surprised at who they are. Say I Facebook friend them or start chatting in private messages--I seem to already know them. I'm not surprised by their opinions, their mannerisms, their positions on controversial topics. Conversely, if I already know someone, and I then read some of their writing, it often reveals facets to them that I've never seen before. I really think you show a lot of yourself in your writing. This is particularly fascinating when you consider that characters are often quite different to the authors. The characters may be wildly different from each other, as well, with drastically varying views on a topic or theme. But there's still something in the author's voice that shines through. Maybe it's because each character generally has something of us inside them, even if it's only one tiny piece. Maybe it's the topics we c...

We interrupt our regularly scheduled writing-and-SF-related blog posts to talk briefly about politics. In the days following the 2016 election, there's been a lot of fear and anger. There are plenty of things I could say. Commentary, analysis, fears. Complaints about Trump's complete ineptness at the role and horrible track record of lies, hate, and misogyny. Bitterness about the democratic party forcing us to accept Clinton as their candidate. For now, I don't want to wax too political. And frankly, while I try to stay up to date, I'm not the most experienced or informed when it comes to politics. I have one point I want to make. Before that, the three most important issues to me personally: 1. Donald Trump has enabled others to feel safe voicing and acting upon extreme bigotry. 2. Hillary Clinton is so disliked and mistrusted, she absolutely did not inspire people to vote for her. 3. Now Donald Trump, as president-elect, will become a role model for children...

I wanted to start talking about books that I've read and enjoyed. Not exactly reviews so much as recommendations. I sort of set myself up for starting these posts with an initial list of great sci-fi books I love , but even so, it's daunting to pick only a handful of books to talk about. I love so many books! Nonetheless, here I am, with a relatively recent read (read it last year). I Am Not A Serial Killer is a YA horror/thriller by Dan Wells. Which, you may notice, is totally not my usual genre. I ended up buying this book after listening to a few seasons of the Writing Excuses podcast. He's one of the podcasters, and after hearing his thoughts on writing and descriptions of his book, I couldn't resist. John Cleaver is a fifteen-year-old sociopath who's always been obsessed with serial killers, and when one crops up in his small town, he gets in touch with his dark side to track them down. It's essentially teenage Dexter , which is one of my favorite T...

When we lived in New Zealand, there were a lot of wind farms near us. Wellington in particular, renowned for its windiness, has enough to provide quite a bit of power for the city and local areas. I don't have as many photos of these as I'd like, but I do have some fantastically foggy shots from exploration with my parents. A google search of Manawatu wind farms will yield plenty of other photos of the area. Cows abound in New Zealand, wherever you are. Even on the top of a mountain next to a wind farm. And because of the dearth of photos, here's one of foggy Wellington. The ones above are actually in Manawatu, but I don't have any photos of the Wellington wind turbines, I'm afraid. My thoughts on this as a setting... Well, I love fog. The fog alone makes me love those pictures. As for the actual wind turbine part, that's an interesting and different sort of backdrop. They make a constant sort of hum if you're close enough to them. While t...

Okay, I have to share my favorite veterinary fun fact. It's the one bit of trivia I can pull out at a party (not that I ever go to parties), and always makes clients giggle. If you scruff ferrets, it makes them yawn. Every time. I use it to look at their teeth. It's super cute. That's all.

Completing a first draft is a huge milestone. If you've never done it before, it's almost unbelievable. To look back and see a whole novel that you wrote, with all these scenes, and events, and characters and things. Then there's editing. For most people, I think this is a dreaded step. For me, the only way I was able to finish the draft was to say, "No editing allowed until the full first draft is finished." It was like an itch I was desperate to scratch, and when I finally got the chance to unleash the edit-monster, it was glorious. I plowed right into it. Oh how much I love chewing apart the prose, cutting needless paragraphs, tweaking and pruning and making each chapter shine. This part of the story is a little blurrier in my memory. I did most of it after school while looking for work, and I think I plowed through so much editing, it's hard to distinguish. I gave each chapter to alpha readers, then rewrote, then asked a writing group about it, then ...