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Posts Tagged ‘writing tips’

Once More, Unto the Breach

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , on 07 Nov 2013| Leave a Comment »

The Wolf Tree

Life has begun (touch wood) to settle. Crises have subsided. Daily dramas have diminished. The weather has turned cold and windy and wet, calming nerves and dampening temperaments.

Now it’s time to get back to work. The Wolf Tree is once more underway.

I’ve had a few days off this week, and First Reader and I have taken long walks in the blustery drear, kicking around ideas like the autumn leaves at our feet. I’ve worked on the timelines for the intertwined stories, settled on names for the major characters, and started to flesh out their personal histories.

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Sergeant Pepper

Posted in Culture, Seattle, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on 08 Oct 2013| 15 Comments »

Sergeant Pepper, our 1962 TR3BIt’s been an interesting ten days…and while this isn’t strictly “writing-related,” give me a minute and I’ll try to wrap it back around to the topic.

During the past week or so, while I was working on “Antelope Hunting with Sir John,” I was also going around looking at cars.

Cars? you say.

Yes. Cars. Remember back when my wife asked me that “unexpected question?” Like that, cars. (more…)

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Emily is GO for Launch

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 17 Sep 2013| 7 Comments »

The Revitalization of EmilyWe are live. “The Revitalization of Emily” is live on Amazon, and available for Kindle readers and apps.

Formatting went well, but there’s one new lesson I learned. Fonts that work well on the printed page are often too big for the Kindles. I had a couple of iterations before the headers worked properly.

Overall, though, an easy process.

Some people wonder why I do this on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) instead of iBooks or Smashwords or any of the several other venues open to short fiction works. They also wonder why I don’t put it up everywhere, simultaneously.

The main reason is one word: reach. (more…)

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Editing Weekend

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 16 Sep 2013| 2 Comments »

The Revitalization of EmilyI spent the weekend doing two things: trying to relax, and editing the novelette.

I succeeded in the latter.

Editing went well, both on the story and on the cover art.

Each editing pass revealed fewer errors–reaching zero by the fourth pass–and fewer lines that gave me pause. Eventually, in editing, I like to get to the point where for each possible change, I have to think, play it two or three ways, and then end up with a STET in the margin.

My last pass, I also took special note of the “said” use. They’re still there (despite my earlier efforts), but now each one that is in the story has been considered. If it’s there, I want it there, and I’m happy with that. (more…)

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He said, She said

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 12 Sep 2013| 3 Comments »

Stack of BooksWe all have our individual quirks of style. Little, verbal quirks. We use a phrase once, like it, use it again, and eventually it becomes habit.

For most people (i.e,. non-authors), this isn’t a problem. A quirky turn of phrase, a tag-line, a preference for the spelling “grey” instead of “gray”–these are not problems for most people.

For writers, though, it can be a problem. Why? Because you can’t see them. And because others can.

Yesterday, I discovered a new one of my own. (more…)

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Supervising the Rewrite

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , on 10 Sep 2013| Leave a Comment »

Kurt R.A. GiambastianiAs I’ve been working on this story, re-creating it from an older model, I’ve been watching over my work. Supervising, if you will.

Overall, the new version is half-again as long–originally around 8,000 words, it now clocks in at about 12,000–and I wondered if that was just because I added a scene here and there.

So I took the opening section. The action is the same. The first and last lines of the section are the same, like fenceposts. But the rest of it has been entirely rebuilt, rewritten, similar only in structure and in what happens. So, what’s the word-count for each version? (more…)

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You Are Surrounded

Posted in Books, Culture, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 30 Aug 2013| 7 Comments »

Echoes from another time.

“You’re too sensitive.”
“I was just teasing!”
“You need to come out of your shell.”
“You spend too much time in your head.”

When I was young, adults labeled me with words like “shy” and “bookish” which didn’t sound bad but I was pretty sure they weren’t compliments. I had no such confusion with the schoolyard taunts of “pussy” and “faggot.”

These were the judgments pronounced upon me. They were the phrases that defined me. They were spoken so often, I believed them. I believed that I was defective, inferior. I believed that I was somehow less. Even with all my gifts–of concentration, of perseverance, in music, as an autodidact–I still felt that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t fit in, because I rarely spoke up, because I enjoyed solitary activities, because I preferred walking in the hills to traveling with the pack.

So, when a friend recommended Susan Cain’s sociological study, Quiet, I was intrigued.

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