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Genre in fiction can be a slippery beast. Sometimes I don’t know what to say when people ask me in what genre I write. I usually say that I am broadly writing in the fantasy genre. Sometimes I […]
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My reading for the week has been a book on syntax, and it is delightful. You might think that a sentence that contains both “syntax” and “delightful” is somehow in error. Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style by Virginia […]
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Several years ago, one of my writing buddies asked me if I had a playlist for the novel-in-progress. “A what?” I asked. “Is that a thing?” Turns out it was a thing. Inspired by my friend Jeff, who […]
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Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor weaves two plotlines that are related, though owing to a twist at the end (no spoilers here), are related in a surprising way. The heart of the book is the power […]
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I have arrived late to the party in reading Birnham Wood by Eleanor Catton. I may not provide anything new in this review, therefore, but only my personal reactions to the book. The book, which borrows its title […]
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Last week I finished the first draft of the novel. I finished the last scene — that is, I filled out the final “sketch” — and called it a first draft. A bright line is useful, if for […]
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In November, I decided to “sketch” the remaining sixteen scenes in my first draft without worrying about details like verb tense or punctuating dialogue. Then in mid-December, I began the work of finishing those scenes—and I’m almost done. […]
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I spent the past week finishing the final scene of the book. The time and place for the scene were present in the primeval outline of 2021, but the contents have shifted around quite a lot as I […]
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I’m not regular about posting about what I’ve been writing, although writing happens every week as I try to meet my self-imposed deadline of finishing the first draft of a novel by the end of the year. A […]
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This was a tough writing week for me. I felt like I was trying to squeeze water from a stone. For the past two weeks I’ve been working on a pivotal scene in which I know what I […]
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