When I was sixteen, I attended my first writing workshop, bringing with me my first attempt at a short story. It was a first draft, all rough, no editing, no outline beforehand. It was everything you would expect from a sixteen-year-old’s first short story. In a word, it was crap. Read more
Last night I dreamed I was on a generational star ship modeled after a Russian palace. It was in disrepair, abandoned, and it was snowing in parts of it. I will never write this story. Okay, part of that is that it’s just a setting, not a real story idea, Read more
One of my favorite ways to procrastinate on writing is to generate meaningless statistics about my writing. I’m a mathmatologist. I believe that somehow, numbers will reveal the future to me. Recently, someone asked me the average number of rejections a short story of mine receives before it is accepted. Read more
A while ago I made my post comparing stories to vases. Lately I’ve noticed a repeating flaw in my first drafts. I see it reading over all my earliest writing: I’ll write about absolutely ANYTHING but the central point of the story. Or, like, anything interesting. I’ll twist scenes to avoid Read more
At Clarion, Cory Doctorow said, “Resist the temptation to think like a dandelion.” (At least I hope I got him quoted right in my wee notebook.) The line I have written under that is: “The cost of reproduction is zero! Spread!” Being Cory, he might have been talking about electronic Read more
I used to think that writing would be like being an acrobat… performing breathless feats, leaving my audience stunned on the ground. Sure, there would be practice, grueling hours of it (didn’t we have “writing exercises” in school?) but that wouldn’t be the real work. I would practice and practice Read more
“This story just needs… more,” the editor said. “It feels thin.” Thanks, I thought, that’s not quite the vaguest advice ever. But then my husband turned it around for me with a metaphor. Hubby and I were talking about stories having channels, like sound channels in a music composition. This Read more