The Worlds - lite

That's the title of an article by Jay Stringer at Do Some Damage, a crime writers' blog. When Stringer writes about writing, I p...

I've almost finished reading the draft of my sci-fi novel, "The Worlds". It's the book I'll be working on this year ...

Now I have three blogs -- this one, another one that is identical except it has graphics, and a separate blog for Xmas Carol . The reaso...

In the early days of this blog, I wrote a lot about the process of writing fiction. How do you write a novel? How do you create a charact...

Writing novels is the most enjoyable, exciting thing I've ever done. But I miss the freedom I experienced when I first began to write....

It seems obvious -- of course you're alone when you write. But I mean you're really alone, to the point where you may as well be w...

Last night I was musing about the characters I've created for my books. Characters can be wildly interesting and it's fun to creat...

Ideas for stories pop into my mind. It's not something I consciously encourage -- It just happens. And sometimes it happens too much. ...

I noticed something odd while editing Xmas Carol. I am brutal in my edits, hacking and slashing just about everything. It seems I can al...

I often think of writing a book in terms of decorating a house. I touched on this idea the other day with the post about making each scene ...

There are many ways to write fiction. You can plan your book, outline it and pave every step of your way to the conclusion -- before writi...

My topic today is inspiration and whether we can encourage it. Are some activities less conducive to inspiration than others? And is there ...

For the past few days I've been writing new scenes for my first book, The Worlds . It's going well. Writing fiction is always a m...

In Ira Levin's "Rosemary's Baby," there is a character who taught me something important about writing. Do you remember R...

If I'm not in the right frame of mind to write on a given day, I can still make progress. There is always some aspect of the job I...

I'm almost done with the edit of my first book, The Worlds . Thanksgiving took a big chunk out of my work schedule but I'm back on ...

One skill every fiction writer needs is the ability to name characters. The right name can bring a character to life. It should sound fres...

You hear people say, "I'm going to write that book someday." But no book ever appears. They honestly want to write the book bu...

When we first create a character we may not be sure of his, well, character. We introduce him in a scene and decide we're fairly happy w...

The thing I find most difficult about writing a novel is coming to the end. It's like losing a child. For months, the story has been wit...