NaNoWriMo Break: Writing a Novel in 7 Easy Steps
Part of a month-long series of inspirational or informational posts during NaNoWriMo. Are you writing a science fiction novel? You’re in luck! It only takes seven easy steps.
Writing
Category: Writing
Writing
NaNoWriMo Break: Words and Phrases to be Retired
Part of a month-long series of inspirational or informational posts during NaNoWriMo. Not unlike the previous entry regarding snowclones, these are phrases you may want to make sure some characters don’t say — or perhaps you want to get a sense of period and sprinkle them in. Ponder for a minute on how memes and phrases spread across time and space. What should your characters be saying?
Writing
NaNoWriMo Break: SnowClones
Part of a month-long series of inspirational or informational posts during NaNoWriMo. I came across the term ‘snowclone‘ last month and thought it was fun. Perhaps you have characters that use snowclones. Perhaps you want to be sure they aren’t used at all. Now you know.
Writing
NaNoWriMo Break: Daily Habits of Writers
Part of a month-long series of inspirational or informational posts during NaNoWriMo. To kick off this month-long series, what better way than to look at some of the methods employed by some accomplished writers? Mind you, depending on what dayjob or other tasks you’re fitting into the month, these may not all be feasible, but they may get wheels turning about how you’ll structure your days over the next few weeks.
Writing
Scheduled Breaks for NaNoWriMo
As many of us plunge into NaNoWriMo (in my case, a script-based variant thereof), I came up with a cunning plan: have inspirational and informational posts throughout the month to help me and perhaps others. Perhaps you can consult these when you’re stuck. Perhaps they’ll be natural breaks if you’re writing using something like the Pomodoro Technique. Whatever the case, I’ll try and update these bright and early every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday — because…
Writing
Doing a Test Run of NaNoWriMo
A writer writes, so I feel with all my work on Stonehenge Casting and Stonehenge XIV this year, I have been neglecting my overall writing. There have been scripts I’ve been meaning to get to and the period after Stonehenge XIV seemed like a good time to dive into them. I also wanted to be writing every day, something that I haven’t managed for most of this year. Enter NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month…
Voiceover Writing
The Brothers Chaps Return!
Okay, so it’s not exactly Homestar Runner –unless you’re thinking of some of the alternate realities Strong Bad emails visited, but there’s an interview and clips of their new surreal Disney XD cartoons in this Vox article. Update: And for those of you who miss Homestar and Strong Bad, there are some wonderful new ‘toons as well, including this particularly meta one.
Writing
Recommended Reading: Oliver Sacks
How could I not be interested in the work of Oliver Sacks? It’s not just the one about the anthropologist on Mars (though I have that). Sacks explored the human condition in a multitude of cases where the humans in question were grappling with many rare and unusual conditions. What is life? What is humanity? What is perception and consciousness? These were some of the questions he touched on in an engaging writing style that…
Writing
Getting Regular Exercise: Writing 20 Minutes a Day
Not too many years ago, I was in the very definition of a soul-sucking job. I knew it was bad news by Day Two, but with a kid on the way, I did my best to mentally buckle down until I could escape. It was a long road, but what brings me joy every time I think to those dark days is that it was writing and creativity as much as anything that saw me…
Writing
Why am I a writer?
Why am I a writer? Because I keep on coming back to it… and happily so. When a new film comes out and I see an interview with an actor or director, I often see them say they do what they do because they “couldn’t imagine doing anything else” or perhaps even that they’re “not good at anything else.” For those of us who to aspire to be some small measure of renaissance men and women, this…