For those of you embarking on the National Novel Writing Month project, NaNoWriMo, you'll start out with enthusiasm and excitement...hopefully enough to carry you through thirty days and the end of your opus. Okay, I'm a prolific author. Over the next week or two, I'll be re-posting eleven tips I've compiled over the years.  If you find yourself flagging, or looking for new ways to increase your productivity, I hope some of these help. Note that these come from my own experiences as well as other authors I’ve talked to, so some might even be contractory. Every writer has different habits,...
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Another post that may help some of you get your novel finished in a month for NaNoWriMo. For most of my career I have used a recorder to dictate my writing; I feel it makes me much more productive.  Here's an article I wrote on the technique. See if you think it might work for you. TALKING TO MYSELF If you see a person walking along engaged in a vigorous conversation with no one else around, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s escaped from the nearest asylum.  It could be me talking to myself.  But don’t be concerned, don’t interrupt me,...
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In celebration of National Novel Writing Month, I'm going to re-post some of my previous "kick in the butt" blogs, in hopes you'll draw some inspiration, get fired up, and move that novel toward the finish line. This one, posted last December, is about my personal-best marathon writing, a full-steam-ahead crash to write my big SF novel THE DARK BETWEEN THE STARS. Not a schedule I would suggest any of you keep, but sometimes the deadline is a dictator. *** DECEMBER: 2012 Due to a series of unfortunate commitments, travel schedules, and other book obligations, I found myself facing a...
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Everybody knows the movie “A Christmas Story.” My childhood was like that, only around Halloween. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, Franksville, population 250, with most of us living out in the country. My parents, my sister, and I lived in a house on Fancher Road, a curved old road that was bypassed when the straight County Highway H went through, cutting off Old Fancher Road like an oxbow in a river. All around Fancher Road and the highway were houses with my cousins, my second cousins, and farmers who had been there since just slightly before...
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