The Journal: The Novel and a Broken Truck

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * The Novel and a Broken Truck * Of Interest Quote of the Day “Writing is fun, and that’s why we do it.” Reavis Wortham The Novel and a Broken Truck I’m posting this mostly to get the “Of Interest” items out to you. The novel continues to progress. I’ve had a few good days of writing, and a couple of slow days. Yesterday, due to a series of unfortunate events, I had only a little over an hour with the novel. My pickup vaporlocked (I thought) a couple of days ago … Read more

The Journal: Plot vs. Story

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Topic: Plot vs. Story * Of Interest Quote of the Day “Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” Judy Garland Topic: Plot vs. Story I feel halfway silly even bothering to offer this as a topic. I do so only because some of “my people” (you guys) might visit Jane Friedman’s site, and you might see a post by a woman named Heather Davis. As always, I wanted to satisfy myself that Dr. Davis was a valid resource. Does she have experience writing … Read more

The Journal: Just Write and Have Fun

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Topic: Just Write and Have Fun * Of Interest Quote of the Day “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.” Michael J. Fox I’ve seldom if ever read a better quote on this topic. Topic: Just Write and Have Fun (Confession Time) I wasn’t going to post an edition of the Journal today, but Matt asked me a question about redrafting: tossing out an opening that isn’t “working” and starting over from scratch. He wanted to know whether I ever … Read more

The Journal: How to Ground the Reader

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Topic: How to Ground the Reader * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “[Patterson’s] a-ha moment in terms of efficiency, he explains, came while writing 1993’s Along Came a Spider: Rather than fill out the story he’d outlined, he decided the outline was the novel.” Mark Athitakis reviewing Patterson’s memoir James Patterson by James Patterson “Character voice bubbles up organically when every aspect of the story is seen through a character’s-eye view….” Lisa Poisso Topic: How to Ground the Reader I’ve said many times before that grounding the reader in the … Read more

The Journal: Anxious or Eager?

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Topic: Anxious or Eager? * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “Anyone with an internet connection can now access an extraordinarily powerful computer capable of quantum computation advantage. Let that sink in. | This is the first time that such a powerful quantum computer has been made available to the public. Borealis — the computer in question — can work with more than 216 squeezed-state qubits, and better yet, it was able to solve a task that would take the best supercomputer at least 9,000 years to complete in 36 microseconds. … Read more

The Journal: Keep Coming Back

In today’s Journal * Two New Sources of Information for Writers * Topic: Keep Coming Back * When a Story Flows * Of Interest Two New Sources of Information for Writers I found a new source for reliable factual information and informed opinion: Interesting Engineering. One example of their articles is in today’s “Of Interest.” If you write SF, to my mind this is a must-have (free) subscription. If you don’t write SF, it’s still an extremely interesting source of information. You can find it at https://interestingengineering.com/. To sign up for the newsletter, scroll to the bottom and click Newsletter. … Read more

The Journal: Pure Writing Into the Dark

In today’s Journal * Welcome * I’m Back! * Topic: Pure Writing Into the Dark First, welcome to r2zajac and any other recent new subscribers. You picked a good time to drop in. (grin) I’m Back! I’m not bragging here folks. I’m celebrating. I just felt like sharing this good news with my friends. Starting Blackwell Ops 8, my current novel, has been nothing short of restarting my life as a fiction writer after a very long 10 months. I’ve written five or six different openings for this novel, and I struggled with all of them. It was like pulling … Read more

The Journal: The Squeaky Stair Technique

In today’s Journal * Topic: The Squeaky Stair Technique * Of Interest Topic: The Squeaky Stair Technique I’ve long wanted to write a topic about pulling the reader into the story quickly and more deeply by focusing down. That is, writing some small thing that causes the reader or viewer to focus his or her attention down on a fine detail. Doing so causes the reader to lean more closely (or deeply) into the story. In fact, I recommend you use this technique in literally every opening you ever write. The point of a good opening is to ground the … Read more

The Journal: Very Short Post Today

In today’s Journal * Very Short Post Today * Should One Seek A Critique? * Of Interest Very Short Post Today Just not a lot to say, and I’m aware that a lot of the stuff inside the recent topics has been negative. I want to get away from that for awhile. Also, the novel’s coming along, but very slowly. I put down fewer than 500 words yesterday, so I didn’t bother updating the numbers. I feel the novel is (I’m) on the verge of breaking out, but it’s (I’m) not quite there yet. As you might imagine, critical mind’s … Read more

The Journal: The Lessons We Learn

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Topic: The Lessons We Learn (a guest post) * Thanks, and guest posts * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “[I]f the market [target audience] determines what works, … what good is a critique in advance?” Matt Perryman “Creating the impression that copywriters need critiques is lucrative business.” Matt Perryman Topic: The Lessons We Learn a guest post by Matt Perryman I wanted to relate an anecdote that relates to your post on crawling befor you walk. Your post made me laugh because it’s not limited to fiction writers. In my … Read more