3 Things I Learned from NaNoWriMo
Another November, another NaNoWriMo complete! For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo means “National Novel Writing Month”, although it’s actually international now and it covers a lot more than novels. It’s for writers anywhere to commit to parking their butts and hammering out some words. The standard commitment is 50,000 words of new material in the […]
Speculative Fiction Writer’s Group
I usually fly solo as a creative. Now, coming from a film background, there’s a TON of collaboration, but when it came time to write the script, to come up with the shots, to edit the film, I’d almost always be on my own. And novel writing is even more so. And I’m thinking I’d […]
The Gold in Research
Most writers of any kind know the importance of research. We don’t want to get that email that starts with “While I enjoyed your recent book, I think you’ll find…” and then explains the jeep we used in our story was never available in soft top, or that the device our protagonist depends upon would […]
In Praise of Short Tales
When I was a filmmaker, it was a known path, so obvious it was cliché. Make your short film. Then your feature. Short films were film school: camera movement, working with actors, budgeting, scheduling, editing, music, so much more. And they’d let you show the gatekeepers you could make a movie. First your short, then […]
Balance
I’ve been thinking about balance lately. I had a draft that I re-read for the first time in a long while, and the lack of balance hit me hard. I developed many of my storytelling skills in the film industry, writing screenplays, so I’m never going to be mistaken for Edward Rutherford or J.R.R. Tolkien. […]