writing

Here’s where I face up to the fact that I will not finish a novel by age 30.

I’ve been working two jobs and searching for another. And I’m working on two writing projects: The Afflicted, which I hoped to finish by now but which I have not; and a short story that is doing its best to turn into a novella, for my writer’s group. This does not leave all that much [...]

I love when the solution to a problem comes together from little elements that were already in the story! When this happens, it’s one of the moments that make writing worth doing.

How about you? What are the moments that make you glad to be a writer?

Holy crap, NaNoWriMo is a month away. I guess I’m officially announcing my intention to cheat this year. Yes, I am continuing The Afflicted instead of moving on to the shiny new gay romantic steampunk road novel. This makes me sad, because the new novel would be incredibly fun to write (All world- and character-building, [...]

Characters should be a product of their time and place, in ways that go far deeper than clothing and accent. Their outlook on life is affected as well — a character born in the Dark Ages is going to have very different expectations than one born on a space station orbiting Jupiter. What your character considers normal will be based on the people they see around them. Ideas of what is ethical or polite will change as well.

KeyNote may be the most useful program I’ve ever downloaded from the web. I use it not only for writing, but for everything from to-do lists to bookmarks to email and blog post drafts. It’s portable, too — when I worked at a place with computer access, I would carry KeyNote, my current novel file, and a file called “notesatwork” on a thumbdrive and use it for writing and general note-taking whenever I got an idea during the day. I’m writing this post in KeyNote, where I have a long list of posts-in-progress in the sidebar, organized by topic and color-coded by completion. If a program can make my chaotic notes something close to organized, it can do the same for anyone.

Today, on the way to work, I was accosted with many story ideas. Not, unfortunately, for the novel I’m working on. Nor for the novel I’ll be writing in November. No, these ideas were for my first NaNo novel, back in November of 2003.