This will come as a surprise to those of you who know my writing style, but I’ve finished a fifth novel-length story, and it’s not even National Novel Writing Month. My first non-NaNoWrimo book was an experiment to see if I could write the story I chickened out of writing last year in favor of…
Fourth Book Stats
It has been some time since my last post, but that has mainly been to keep my pace up in finishing the fourth novel started last November. I managed to beat out my previous novel’s fourth edit by three months, so I’m moving considerably faster than I used to! I think the primary contributing factor…
Writing Tools
Although the main tool I was planning to discuss was something for ferreting out cliches and overused expressions, the timing was right for kicking off with this article on the preferred writing tools of some famous authors. I’m sure that not many modern publishers would appreciate an envelope stuffed with hundreds of pages of loose-leaf…
Short or Long Story?
Once in a while I come across a novel that should have been a short story or a short story that should have been a novel. What seems to be the problem is: A short story that should have been a long story = a character-focused story that doesn’t pan out because, like an awkward…
Writing with Style
This jumps back to the earlier post about JK Rowling being recently outed by her style, but there is a site that will analyze a few paragraphs of work and tell what famous author’s writing style the writing resembles. I Write Like Of course I have no idea what sort of algorithm is behind the…
Last Work
Starting work on a novel (or any large project) combines an act of creation with an act of destruction. With limited time, the pursuit of an idea goes hand in hand with all of the ideas that aren’t pursued. Every idea is brought to life on the battlefield of a thousand dead ones. Considering a…
Frequently Rowling
Frequency (a quick sketch and Photoshop treatment to avoid using the same old same old frequency wave) This is a bit of an extension on the previous post about “just” showing up too much. While it’s probably old news to everyone but me, the method used by Peter Millican of Oxford University and Patrick Juola…
Did You…?
This is a public service announcement. Did you remember to save your document? Did you remember to back it up on the USB drive and another computer without checking “Yes” to overwrite all? Did you remember to save your document? This is prompted by what may have been the cause of a little lost work….
Third Book Stats
I’ve finally finished the fourth draft of my latest novel-length story, which I started on November 1st of last year, as I’ve done in years past. Considering I finished the fourth draft of my previous novel-length story in October of last year, I’ve gotten a lot faster. Some of that is due to more experience…