I've been doing some naval gazing around my social media strategies over the past month or so, ever since my largest platform, Twitter, went through some major upheavals that may eventually result in the company going under. Creatives of all stripes are caught firmly in the grip of social media and web strategies to try... Continue Reading →
Forks and contemporary fantasy
A few weeks ago we took an impromptu trip to the Olympic National Park, and in the process we stopped by Port Angeles and Forks. I really wanted to make this trip specifically because Twilight has been such a popular book series and I knew it was set in a small town in Washington State.... Continue Reading →
Invisible Work
Hello, folks! It's time to talk about a subject I've pontificated on before on this blog. That is, specifically, the invisible work that goes into writing. I will have been in Seattle for three weeks as of this Sunday, and I've gotten a lot of stuff done. You haven't necessarily been able to see that,... Continue Reading →
Creative Careers: Advice for persistence
Recently, someone asked for advice for creatives pursuing their artform as a career. I realized I hadn't done a writing advice post for a while, so I've decided to share my tips on how to keep going. When pursuing writing or any other creative career, the number one best piece of advice I've gotten is... Continue Reading →
The Face Doesn’t Match the Butt, aka Why Revisions
First, a moment of celebration, for a few weeks ago I finished the first very rough draft of the WIP! The working title for this project was "White Wedding" and it has been a trainwreck from start to finish. But most of it is on paper now and I'm going to ignore it for a... Continue Reading →
Lessons from contemporary fantasy
Way back in 2018, when I was at FutureScapes, I had the pleasure of seeing Fran Wilde give an excellent presentation on How to Boil Water. If you haven't had a chance to yet, I encourage you to see Fran give this lecture in person. Essentially, it is a thought exercise about a very basic... Continue Reading →
Why you should take a break
Towards the end of January I turned in the last round of deep edits on a project that I had been working on semi-unexpectedly for about two months, referenced in my last post. I promptly felt like falling down and sleeping for ten days, despite the fact that I had just come back from vacation... Continue Reading →
The two kinds of writer’s block
Some days, being a creative and trying to build a career out of it feels like being on a hamster wheel you can't get off of. I am a human who happens to produce an overabundance of ideas. I'm good at it. Execution of said ideas? Sometimes difficult. Ideas? I have them for days. A... Continue Reading →
You can do everything right
Last week Publisher's Weekly published an article about the increasing inequity in advances for traditionally published authors. This comes in the wake of several years of writing income studies that are showing median writer income to be decreasing steadily. From the 2018 report by the Author's Guild: Median incomes of all published authors who were... Continue Reading →
The invisible price of creating
It's impossible to make something from nothing. I spend a lot of time feeling guilty for things. It's one of my flaws, and like many flaws it can also be a strength. It's good to know what your impacts on others are, and it's good to try to mediate those impacts as you are able.... Continue Reading →
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