 A J Hartley
read all posts by A J Hartley Ok, let’s start by saying what this isn’t: it’s not a post about why you should outline rather than write by the seat of your pants (and it would be great if we could stay away from that particular debate in the comments). It’s also not about how you should outline your novel. It’s about how I happen to do it.
At Magical Words we often say that there are many different ways to approach writing and that not all methods work for all writers. This post is going to be a case in point.
As I’ve said before, I used to be a pantser, but found that my books often lacked a tightness and sense of purpose because I had a hard time getting enough distance from the first draft to really knock it into shape. In one fairly recent instance which I’ve mentioned before, I returned to a [...]
Continue reading Outlining your novel: a method.
 Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie Murphy All right, really it’s weeks 3 & 4, but we’re going to refer to this as a 26 week series rather than complicate it any further. So: Week Two of what this job is like down there in the trenches!
Writing: Frankly not as much as I’d hoped, but in the region of 20K. As it happens, I’m keeping a live blog during the writing of my Kickstarter campaign novella “No Dominion”, so this is a literal play by play account of a day’s work:
Scanning over yesterday’s work, getting back in the swing of where I was. Changing a few words here and there to make the voice more Gary and less Jo-by-default. Walker Papers stories, whether they’re Jo or not narrating, seem to want to be told in first person, which makes writing other PsOV a kind of interesting challenge.
8200 words: …I swear to God, sometimes it’s [...]
Continue reading A Year In The Life: Week 2
 Lucienne Diver
read all posts by Lucienne Diver Another of my Agent Anonymous articles originally published in the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) Bulletin:
Authors’ Checklist of Dos and Don’ts
You may be right; I may be crazy.
Absolute props to Billy Joel for…well, his entire opus of work, but I can tell you right now that it’s definitely not a lunatic we’re looking for in publishing. What we really want are people as professional as they are talented, who understand about business, time management, promotion and communication. So, I’m going to hit hard on some dos and don’ts, because what seems obvious to some is not to others. And it’s always better to spot and avoid the pitfalls rather than stepping into them.
Let’s begin at the beginning (at least of the business end of publishing): submissions.
Don’t: Rush your work out the door. Whether you’re a beginning writer or a publishing pro, there’s [...]
Continue reading Authors’ Checklist of Dos and Don’ts
 Misty Massey
read all posts by Misty Massey Zombies are hot these days. Whether they’re the moaning, shambling kind from Night of the Living Dead, the fast-moving Rage types or the Walking Dead zombies that fall a little in between, people think zombies are cool. There are zombie walks at cons and classes on doing zombie makeup. For three years in a row there was an online zombie blogalypse called Blog Like It’s The End Of The World, in which everyone wrote entries to their blogs on a designated day as if the zombie apocalypse was occurring. There’s even a zombie marathon (and let me tell you, if I lived closer, I would SO join in. As a zombie, naturally – I can’t run well enough for a road race. I shamble much more effectively.) And, of course, there are zombie novels… World War Z, Feed, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, and [...]
Continue reading You Should Write About Zombies!
 DavidBCoe
read all posts by DavidBCoe In recent weeks, we’ve spent a good deal of time here at MW talking about the things a writer needs to do well. Last week, I wrote about different types of ambition. A.J. discussed the ways in which arrogance can feed creativity. Kalayna has posted recently about inspiration and motivation. I’d like to continue this conversation. I think that those of us who create bring different qualities to bear on our work — we carry different arrows in our quivers, if you will. Some qualities, it seems to me, are universal; ambition of one sort or another — be it creative, or output, or material — seems to run deep in all writers. Then again, some qualities are more idiosyncratic.
I believe there is something to be said for recognizing our own strengths and weaknesses, for understanding which tools we have at our disposal, and which ones we might need [...]
Continue reading On Writing: What Are We Good At? What Can We Improve?
A J Hartley
read all posts by A J Hartley You see it all the time when people say they are writers, that hesitant, slightly embarrassed hitch in the voice, a certain shiftiness in the eyes, as if they are claiming to have just eaten the Eifel tower while no one was looking. It’s a lie, says the voice, or at very least a kind of half-joke. Of course, I’m not a real writer, say the flitting eyes. That would be absurd.
This isn’t just something you get from newbies or from writers who haven’t yet been published. It’s rampant among perfectly successful authors (including myself and my esteemed MW colleagues), that nagging anxiety that however much we managed to land a book deal and even rack up some sales or awards, we’re frauds.
David talked about this persistent concern the other day but I want to push it into a slightly different area. Where do these insecurities come from [...]
Continue reading The Uncertainty Principle: or how do writers know if they are any good?
 Kalayna
read all posts by Kalayna Hey all. This is going to be a rather short post because I’m behind on my writing schedule, but it will have media and pictures, so I hope that makes up for it. ^_^
Today I want to talk about what inspires you to write. Not what gives you ideas, but what puts you in the mood or makes you want to write. For me, there are several different things that really get my creative juices flowing.
One is music. I’m rather eclectic with my tastes and when I’m in certain moods, it is just possible that my ipod will jump from an industrial or darkwave song to something from a Disney soundtrack. But while this might be part of what I listen to while I write, not all music really inspires. And what inspires changes from time to time (even day to day). Right now the synth/violin music of [...]
Continue reading What inspires you
 Faith Hunter
read all posts by Faith Hunter For years I said that self-publishing was something I’d not consider doing, but that was before the advent of: the total change in the publishing world, the importance of the Internet to culture and society, the ease of e-publishing, and the failure of Borders. The world has changed. So have I. Change is a necessity, is part of the survival of the fittest, and to not change is to fail. I’m not fond of failure.
As most of you know, Catie (C.E.) Murphy and I worked on a crossover story with our main characters Jane Yellowrock and Joanne Walker. This collaboration was total fun, a sharing of skillsets, abilities, and people we’ve worked with in the past who would help us on the way to our destination. And yes – it was self-published.
I’d like to share how that collaboration came about, from my perspective, and I hope Catie will [...]
Continue reading Easy Pickings – an Exercise in Sharing and Self-Publishing
 Mindy Klasky
read all posts by Mindy Klasky The “muddle in the middle” problem has come up before on Magical Words. Some writers will tell you they love writing the first several pages of a novel, when the characters are fresh, the plot is new, and the words flow like quicksilver. Other writers will say that they love writing the last several pages, when all the plot pieces are stitched together, all the loose threads are stitched, when every word has a satisfying finality.
Almost no one likes the middle. (Yeah, I’m sure there are folks out there who do. And they’ll likely chime in, in response to this post…)
Middles go on and on (and, sometimes, on and on and on – you get the idea.) There’s progress to be made, but it’s hard to measure against the bulk of chapters ahead, the ones behind. We know where we want to go, but it can take a [...]
Continue reading The Muddle in the Middle
DavidBCoe
read all posts by DavidBCoe “…This hardworking if glum and unambitious debut might just–but only just–keep a nostril above the flood of mediocre fantasy currently sloshing about.” — Kirkus Reviews, on Children of Amarid, by David B. Coe
Okay, not my favorite line from the many reviews I’ve received over the years. In truth, there was a lot in this review that bothered me, including a comment about the birds of prey in the book (who are the foundation of the magic system) being “merely a nuisance.” I also didn’t like them calling my book glum, nor did I appreciate the damning-with-ever-so-faint-praise ending. But to this day, the word that bothers me most is “unambitious.”
Ambition for writers comes in many forms and works on many levels, and I am proud to say that I am ambitious in every way imaginable. I believe that my various sorts of ambition serve to better my work [...]
Continue reading On Writing: The Value of Ambition
DavidBCoe
read all posts by DavidBCoe Today we welcome back to MW Joshua Palmatier, who also writes as Benjamin Tate. Joshua/Benjamin is a fantasy writer with DAW Books, with two series on the shelf and a few short stories, and is co-editor with Patricia Bray of two anthologies. As Joshua, he has written the “Throne of Amenkor” trilogy—The Skewed Throne, The Cracked Throne, and The Vacant Throne. Now, as Benjamin Tate, he has written Well of Sorrows and has just released Leaves of Flame. He has short stories in several anthologies and has co-edited After Hours: Tales from the Ur-bar and (soon-to-be-released) The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity (March 2012). Find out more about his work at www.joshuapalmatier.com and www.benjamintate.com. Please join me in welcoming Joshua to MW. [Wild applause]
*****
Magic. It’s the heart of every fantasy, in some way or another, and if it’s removed from a true fantasy novel, the novel should [...]
Continue reading Magic Systems: A Guest Post From Joshua Palmatier, AKA Benjamin Tate
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie Murphy We talk a lot on MW about what habits you need to make as a writer, what goals you need to set, how there are give-and-takes all the way through a writing career. I’ve been considering a year-long themed set of postings that are simply A Year In The Life: trying to get some of the nitty-gritty of the work down in part so our readers here can get an on-going sense of what it’s like to do this as a career. I’ve got some other things to talk about today, too, but: would that be of interest?
The Other Things I have to talk about today tie into that, mind you, because as of today Faith Hunter and I have officially plunged into the fascinating new waters of self publishing. “Easy Pickings”, the crossover novella we wrote featuring both our main characters, Jane Yellowrock and Joanne Walker, has gone [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life
Faith Hunter
read all posts by Faith Hunter Morning all. Or evening, depending opon when you get to MW.
Before I get started — Just an aside: Raven Cursed, the fourth Jane Yellowrock novel, came out on the 3rd. If you haven’t seen the cover, here it is, though it is much prettier in perosn — the green foil of my name is gor-je-mous!
On to the post. AJ’s and David’s first posts of the year got me thinking about goals for 2012. (Not resolutions—I will never call them that, because I am useless at following through on things that sound firm and written in stone.) So I pulled up last year’s goals to take a peek. You know, the old, “I can’t move ahead until I have covered my trail,” syndrome. I think writers in particular are easily brought under thrall to that attitude, maybe as a part of following a plot trail from beginning to end, or [...]
Continue reading GOALS from 2011 to 2012
Misty Massey
read all posts by Misty Massey Last weekend I attended the book signing for Faith Hunter’s latest release, Raven Cursed. Kalayna Price was also signing books at the same time, so when festivities had wrapped up, we all went out for dinner together. We had a marvelous time, talking and laughing and making plans for upcoming con events. At one point, Kalayna was telling me how she had to have other people tell her what beef tastes like, because she doesn’t eat it, but one of her characters does. Take a second and think about how tricky that might be. “Beef is savory, and tender,” you might say. “It tastes of dark brown warmth and richness.” That’s poetic, sure, but does that really describe it? We who do eat beef know what it tastes like, but how do you express that to someone who doesn’t, in a way that is useful enough to her that she [...]
Continue reading Getting the Details
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