Invasion Day
Jana looked up and noticed an unearthly glow filtering in between the yellowing plastic planks of the boarded-up window. She had been reading a propaganda pamphlet to pass the time, but her attention...
View ArticleReady your quills for NaNoWriMo!
Attention aspiring authors, National Novel Writing Month begins tomorrow! For those of you not in the know, NaNoWriMo is a month-long self-guided “competition” in which hundreds of thousands of amateur...
View ArticleMaking progress on NaNoWriMo, and a GNU Emacs tutorial
I’m making good progress on my novel for National Novel Writing Month, about my participation in which I’ve previously blogged. Incidentally, that previous sentence is a good example of why it isn’t a...
View ArticleThe potential pitfalls of breakneck speed novel writing
I’m 7,000 words into my novel for National Novel Writing Month and I’ve already learned quite a bit. But first off, allow me to brag a little bit. 7,000 words in three days is definitely ahead of the...
View ArticleNaNoWriMo is half over and I am half done
National Novel Writing Month, which I am competing in this year, is now officially half over, fittingly enough seeing as how half of November is gone. Not so coincidentally, I just wrote word 25,000 of...
View ArticleClosing in on completing NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month, which I am competing in, ends on Friday, November 30th. Unfortunately, I’m only at 38,000 words. I need to reach 50,000 words to win. So I have three days left in which to...
View ArticleI did it! I wrote a novel in a month
What a crazy month it’s been. Computer gaming has fallen by the wayside as the largest chunk of my free time has been poured into the novel I’ve been working on for National Novel Writing Month. But I...
View ArticleI really need to read more novels
Competing in (and winning!) 2007′s National Novel Writing Month made me realize something: I really need to read more novels. It’s pathetic how few novels I’ve read recently. I don’t remember reading...
View ArticleRevisiting one of my terrible first attempts at writing science fiction
I’m a digital pack rat. I have everything I’ve ever written on a computer squirreled away on my current computer, including over a dozen years of homework assignments. It’s not too hard to do. Each...
View ArticleA Stay At Motel Z
The upper crest of the Sun languished above the horizon, casting the long rays and shadows of dusk across the scene in front of me. The sky smoothly transitioned from a brilliant swirl of purple and...
View ArticleYou got your zombie in my Pride and Prejudice!
This has to be the best contest ever: Take a paragraph from a book and add a zombie. Think about how that might work for a few seconds, then read an example of how it works with a Jane Austen novel....
View ArticleBlogging and writing, a dichotomy?
Robin Hobb wrote a very thought-provoking piece on why she thinks blogging is evil, at least for writers. The argument goes that there’s only so much creative output one person can produce in a day, so...
View ArticleArthur C. Clarke heads off to that great Rama in the sky
It is with much sadness that I learn of the death of Arthur C. Clarke at the age of 90 in his country of residence, Sri Lanka. Arthur C. Clarke was the last surviving member of the trio of great golden...
View ArticleLunar colony nomenclature
So, I was musing about Lunar colonies on the commute home from work tonight, as I am often wont to do, and I came up with an apt name for humankind’s first permanent colony on Luna. Second Basket Think...
View ArticlePlanning out a science fiction short story
Last week I tried out a new ideation technique I sort of figured out on my own. Basically, I developed the shortest possible summary of a story, and then continued asking myself questions about more...
View ArticleOld Man’s War: Decent, but not revolutionary
I discovered John Scalzi’s blog Whatever a couple months back and I’ve been reading nearly everything he’s posted to it since. The name of the blog is blah, but don’t let that fool you. He’s been doing...
View Article“The Ghost Brigades” shows clear signs of Scalzi’s improvement as an author
Having recently read Old Man’s War, it’s not surprising that I’ve just finished reading its sequel The Ghost Brigades. I liked Old Man’s War, but I found some significant flaws in it that hampered my...
View ArticleSome excellent advice for budding writers
If you’re a budding writer, or even an established writer who still needs a bit of help, you should definitely check out the list of Ten Mistakes Writers Don’t See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do)....
View ArticleThe key to getting in the mood to write
Wow, William McCamment hit the nail on the head with this one: The secret to getting into the mood to write is to start writing. In other words, writing creates the mood, it does not wait on it. I can...
View ArticleWe humans are quite full of ourselves
It is one of the conceits of our race that we are quite full of our own intelligence. Hopefully, one day we’ll run across a vastly more intelligent species and be put in our collective place. But until...
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