When I was composing the initial draft of The Meditations of Caius Caligula, I followed a pattern from the obvious namesake The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: in its Chapters. MoMA has Books rather than chapters, and the chapters are numbered for the sake of quotation. There are about 12 Books, and each of them is… Read More Caligula Edit Update: The Aurelian Structure
My initial plan was to make changes to this site subtly, but visual issues with the theme required a new look, and when combined with the scale of the changes I’ve made on social media, that became more appropriate. So, in brief, let me relate what’s happening: My Tumblr blogs are deleted. Every Damn CD… Read More The Grand Deletion
I found this today on Twitter: For fantasy fiction the only typeface you need is the 1894 version of Bradley. Less fussy than Morris Troy and less shouty than American Text it was designed by Will Bradley for a Christmas issue of The Inland Printer. It is the font of wizards, winters and sensitive Goths.… Read More The Bradley Font and Classic Pulp
Every no gets you closer to yes. This is part of the process of shifting through to find the best match. If your work is good, it will find a market. These are things authors have learned to tell themselves. Not because they are true, but because they are hopeful, and hope is a necessity… Read More Rejection is Progress
Writing is a process of self-deception. In the first place, you deceive yourself that anything you create will be read, understood, and appreciated. That’s not me being emo, that’s speaking to the large likelihood that your work will die on the vine. That’s simple statistics. So before anything else, you have to teach yourself to… Read More You Can’t Write Unless You Can Lie
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/bqbdey/TDTU6.m4a In the lastest in the new season of my Podcast, I lament Disney’s devotion to live-action remakes, defend the adverb, and amuse myself by saying “blog” too much.
The most basic structure for a story is the three-act rising-action-to-climax. They teach it in high school. It works because it hits the beats that conform to emotional expectations that people have. But it’s not the only structure that can be. I mentioned earlier this week when I finally got Chapter XII finished that it… Read More On the Fourth Act
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” -Jack London So I finally finished Chapter 11 of The Sword over the weekend. For a transitional chapter, this one took forever. I’m not sure if the culprit that dragged it out over so many weeks was a loss of confidence in my… Read More Writer’s Block, Resistance, and the Grind
via A Writer’s Path: There are three points: Avoid Repetition – In the substance of your writing, words used, plot occurences, etc. Sometimes repetition is useful, but you have to know how much you’re doing it. Avoid Monotony – how is this different from “Repetition”? Here the author refers to rhythm, i.e. what do your… Read More Writing Principles Derived From Musici
Here’s where we are on my Civil War novel. I just finished Chapter 7 of a planned 15. Chapters are averaging somewhere between 4,000-5,000 words (rough estimate). This will put me at about 70,000 words, reasonable size for a novel. If I finish in the next six weeks or so, I can let it lie… Read More The Sword Update
Content Blues 