Day: June 26, 2019

Smart Advice from Smart People

Angela Slatter on What It’s Like To Finish a Trilogy

Angela Slatter has written a post about writing the third book in a trilogy and figuring out structures for the Always Trust In Books blog. It amuses me because a friend of mine recently commented that I do not seem to like geeky things, citing the fact that I rarely seem to talk about Star Wars or Star Trek or Doctor Who. Meanwhile, I suspect that I am the person referenced who banged on about story structure and Star Wars in Angela’s presence a little too often, because it’s spent a lot of time as my go-to for structure examples (back in the days before I banged on about story structure and Die Hard instead…) For the record: I’m a fan of Star Wars, fan of Doctor Who. Usually irritated by Star Trek, outside of Discovery and Deep Space Nine, because it never fits what I want from the narrative and the abstract level in which their space battles never

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Wordcount Escalation Woes

Elizabeth Bear wrote a fantastic newsletter about creativity and bad habits last week. You can read it online, if you’re not a subscriber, but subscriptions are a magical thing. The really useful take-away, meditating on the internet and productivity and the psychology of creativity: Measuring one’s self against the internet rarely turns out well. Unless you’re reading dub one-star reviews of your favorite book to make yourself feel better about the dumb one-star reviews of your own book, because obviously some people failed reading comprehension and don’t know it. (This works until you start getting angry on behalf of Watership Down, because it deserves so much better than “There are no boating accidents in this novel, if I could give it zero stars I would.**) The thing is, a thousand good words a day is a pretty good rate. But it’s hard to remember that when everybody around you is engaged in wordcount escalation, or the deadlines and the sewer bill are