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On Revising

The morning slog through a max of 300 words of a first draft. Ploughing a rocky field with a Neolithic ploughshare, stopping every foot or so to pry up a boulder and roll it over to the growing drystone field wall.

2024-06-30T16:34:02-05:00October 29th, 2023|Blog|

On Rewriting Speculative Fiction

The challenge peculiar to SF: You’re trying to show, not tell. But how do you “show" a world that, to one degree or another, is unknown, unique, and may even operate by physics that are different from the laws your reader subconsciously applies?

2024-06-30T16:32:50-05:00March 20th, 2023|Blog, Issue #12|

On Pantser First Drafts

I’m about 75% pantser. I can intuit dim outlines; I usually know more or less where I'll end up but have no idea how to get there.

2024-06-30T16:31:22-05:00October 16th, 2021|Blog|

On Drafts

First draft: In your first draft you get to be Wild Being of the Woods. Write crazy. Stop and start, veer off, break rules, color outside the lines. Let the story discover itself. Later you can figure out what to do with it.

2024-06-30T16:30:31-05:00December 20th, 2020|Blog|

On Responding to an Idea

What you respond to in an idea or a prompt—what Ursula K. Le Guin called a “thought experiment”— may be big or small, clearly structural or emotionally subtle. Anything, really.

2024-06-30T16:29:21-05:00June 30th, 2020|Blog|
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