Motivation vs. Habit
On the door at my gym, someone hung a sign that says, “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit keeps you going.” I began working out regularly over 20 years ago. Since then, I’ve dropped about 75 pounds, and I’ve run or walked something in neighborhood of 22,000 miles. I can’t even imagine how much I’ve […]
Be Excited
The most productive writers, I’ve noticed, aren’t necessarily the ones with the most talent or the greatest skills. They may not be the most physically fit or even the most motivated. The most productive writers are the ones who get excited by their work. What do I mean by “getting excited”? Quite simply this. To […]
Taking Ownership of an Idea
As the lead judge for one of the world’s largest writing contests, I read a lot of stories. Very seldom do I see a completely unique concept for a tale. For example, I see a lot of stories that have vampires or werewolves or superheroes in them. I see tales about interstellar races, cloning, haunted […]
Silver Bullets
Sometimes people ask me questions such as, “If there were just one thing that I needed to know to become a great writer, what would it be?” Or, I might get asked, “If there were just one writing course that I should take, which one would it be?” I often feel that those writers are looking for […]
Measuring Up to the Competition
Whenever you express an idea, you can look at the poetry of your language, your use of diction, your originality, and compare it to other samples of the same idea. For example, a friend of mine was telling me once that as his mother died, she begged him, “Stay with me. It’s getting dark.” Later, he […]
The Wonder Genre
Wonder literature may be the most popular literature in the world. You probably don’t know that, because the truth is that the evidence to support this has long been obfuscated or overlooked. Currently when we talk about stories, we classify them in a couple of ways. We may talk about the genre of the story—such […]
Everyone Deserves Great Stories!
Years ago I watched a panel on literary criticism. Just as the panel was concluding, one . . . fellow stopped the panel and said, “Wait a minute. We didn’t talk about which branch of literary criticism is most important!” He then pointed out that his field—literary criticism in the adult mainstream, was by far […]
Studying Your Genre
Last week I managed to anger a number of people when I talked about sales in the young adult genre. To be honest, I had no idea how many people have misconceptions about the genre, and that is kind of a shame. For example, I was sent information from a couple of popular blogs that […]
Discrimination in the Writing World
A few days ago, I saw a Facebook post from a woman who complained that she didn’t want to see panels by “boring, old, white, cisgender men” at the upcoming World Science Fiction Convention. Now, I’ve always fought against discrimination based on age, race, sexual orientation, and gender, so I was kind of surprised that […]
Tightening Your Focus
When you’re writing a tale, it almost always turns out better if you get deep into the head of your protagonist and tell the story from that person’s point of view. This is especially true if you have multiple protagonists, because it means that you will need to characterize those people by showing just how […]