I’ve been trolling the blogs, the last few days, reading fiction from new/unpublished writers. I see the same thing, over and over, the same mistakes, repeated.
I don’t know why writers continue to make these mistakes. Read any article or book on modern writing and you’ll see these problems called out. Perhaps it’s that some new writers don’t read books about writing, don’t analyze their own work. I don’t know.
What I do know, is that there are some new writers who read this blog (we’re up to 80+ followers, now, with slow but steady growth), so I thought I’d go over these basic problem areas in a series of posts. I hope it starts a conversation with some of the apprentice writers out there. (more…)
I’ve never considered short stories to be a money-making proposition. The days of ten-penny-a-word venues for genre fiction are gone; you’re lucky to find even a penny-per-word, these days. But short stories are still a really good way to explore a new technique or try out an idea. Some of my novels were born directly from a short story, and many ideas I’ve used in novels I played with and refined in short stories.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 