December 29, 2008 – 2:44 pm
A long time ago, in a post far away, Sara, a reader of this blog (at least back then she was; I don’t know whether she still is), asked in a post comment:
“Do you have any ideas about how to incorporate backstory and the character’s thoughts into the story without interrupting the flow?”
Accomplishing this is [...]
November 14, 2008 – 4:11 pm
Jeff DeRego is no fan of NaNoWriMo. I can sympathize. What I can’t sympathize with is that he disses the idea of writing “every day.” Listen to his audio commentary for Paula B’s Writing Show. Here’s my audio response.
I agree with him on NaNoWriMo. I agree with him except on one point. I think writers [...]
November 6, 2008 – 4:36 pm
Finishing the book…
A friend of a friend asked me the following questions:
I am writing a book. I have finished the first half and just need some editing and advice as to how to orient the story so I can complete the second part.
I would say, whatever else you do, finish writing the story. You can [...]
October 25, 2008 – 3:31 pm
I never do NaNoWriMo, because I believe if you’re a writer, you should write. Period. One month of excitement is not going to change your life. It’s like one of those one-day self-help seminars. You go; you have an enlightening, emotional experience; you feel good about yourself and your future; and three days later, you’re [...]
October 12, 2008 – 12:43 am
I know I’ve been away for a while, because I’ve been in the midst of the frantic throes of releasing my new novel, The Conscience of Abe’s Turn and my dad John King’s memoirs, Can You See God in This Picture. (We sold out of the latter on the day of its release, but I [...]
October 8, 2008 – 5:49 pm
This post was originally posted at my personal blog.
A friend of mine emailed and asked:
If you don’t mind me asking, how much did it cost you to publish your book (or your dad’s)? You seem to be doing all of the important things that subsidy presses do and probably at considerable savings.
I’m still refining my [...]
I had written and completed numerous shorter works over the years, but The Conscience of Abe’s Turn: Season 1 Episodes 1-4 is the first full novel-length work I had ever written and edited to completion. The experience taught me a whole new set of lessons.
Some of these lessons I learned from my own editing experience. [...]
I frequently use PersonalityPage.com to assemble personality traits for characterization. The site is not organized for writers. In fact, the site navigation is poorly designed and pretty difficult to figure out. I had to poke around the site a bit to find the best pages there for characterization and how to use them. But having [...]
February 29, 2008 – 4:04 pm
70 Days of Sweat, Round 3 begins tomorrow. I will not be participating. Just as I participate in neither NaNoWriMo nor NaNoEdMo. Why not? What do I have against writers trying to write a book? Nothing, except…
In my view, either I’m a writer, and I write consistently. Or I’m not a writer, and I don’t. [...]
December 31, 2007 – 7:21 pm
Much of the time, we treat relatives as obligations: “Yeah, but what can you do? He’s family.”
This year, during the holiday break between December 25 and January 1, the kids and I and Grandma and Grampa piled into a rented minivan and trekked 7 hours to southern New Jersey… where the aunts and uncles and [...]