KillZone Blog

The Journal: Post 3 in the Heinlein’s Rules Series

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Topic: Post 3 in the Heinlein’s Rules Series * It’s no secret * For an update * The Numbers Quote of the Day Fun quote of the day: “After I saw a bumper sticker that read I’m a veterinarian so I drive like an animal, I realized how many proctologists I see on the roads.” Anonymous meme Topic: Post 3 in the Heinlein’s Rules Series Today the topic is mostly about Rule 4: You must put it on the market. Q: I want to dive right in to some of my … Read more

The Journal: Post 2 in the Heinlein’s Rules Series

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Topic: Post 2 in the Heinlein’s Rules Series * For an update * The Numbers Quote of the Day “[B]y pushing productivity, we may actually be creating a generation of better storytellers.” David Farland Topic: Post 2 in the Heinlein’s Rules Series Actually, more introductory stuff today, with some specifics on Heinlein’s Rules mixed in. Q: To provide context, how long have you been using this process, how many books/stories have you been able to write, and what kind of success have you achieved? Harvey: I first discovered Heinlein’s Rules and … Read more

The Journal: The upcoming topics and a short tale

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * That third quote * The upcoming topics and a short tale * The Journey Home: Part 8 * The second quote * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “The common denominator of success — the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful — lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.” Albert E. N. Gray “The courage to take the first step. The discipline to take the next one.” FarnamStreetblog.com “It is hard to believe that a … Read more

The Journal: Great Topics Coming

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Great Topics Coming * Another good day * The Numbers Quote of the Day “If there ain’t a rock in my boots when I pull ’em on in the morning, I know it’s gonna be a good day. ‘Course I make a point of dumping my boots before I pull ’em on.” Wes Crowley” Great Topics Coming Again today, I almost didn’t post an entry to the Journal. Today it was for a different reason. I altered my schedule a bit and moved over to the writing computer a little earlier. … Read more

The Journal: Mad Genius Club

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Thanks to a relatively obscure post * I started * The Numbers Quote of the Day “[I]n the [traditional publishing[ industry, it’s never about publishing what people want to read. It’s about ‘educating’ the public. Which has taken them from 100K plus printruns for midlist to 10k printruns for high list. The problem is it’s not a business plan. It’s a virtue signaling plan.” Mad Genius Club Thanks to a relatively obscure post at The Passive Voice and a little digging, I stumbled across what might be a treasure trove at … Read more

The Journal: A Gentle Reminder

In today’s Journal * Topic: A Gentle Reminder * Fiction Lengths * The Numbers Topic: A Gentle Reminder A gentle reminder today not to believe every bit of every article you read about writing. Better to consider each statement and question posed in such articles, then assign each a value. The values I assign personally range from Valid on the high end to Maybe Useful in the middle to PBS on the low end, and I’m not talking about the television network. In my rating system the P stands for “Pure” and the B stands for “Bat” or “Bull,” your … Read more

The Journal: Random Thoughts

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Random Thoughts * In today’s “Of Interest” * Yesterday * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “In my case all painting… is an accident. I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don’t in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.” Francis Bacon (via The Passive Voice) “Anything you can make, you make by accident. … you have … Read more

The Journal: A Minor Glitch

In today’s Journal * For the first time ever * I hit a minor glitch * The Numbers Well, for the first time ever, this morning I came back and deleted a large segment of an original Journal post. The simple fact is, I’m tired of beating my head against a wall. I don’t care how anyone else writes, I don’t care what sort of fertilizer they’re peddling, and I don’t care who buys it. My job as an instructor or mentor is to pay forward what I’ve learned and to help where I can. I do my best to … Read more

The Journal: Focusing Down, Revisited, Briefly

In today’s Journal * Topic: Focusing Down, Revisited, Briefly * I’m in a race * The Numbers Topic: Focusing Down, Revisited, Briefly Hmm. I think there might be a bit of a disconnect between what I mean and what you hear when I say “focus down.” When I say a writer should focus down, I’m going back to emphasizing that it’s the characters’ story as described through the physical and emotional senses of the POV character. It isn’t what the writer thinks (critical mind) to add-in, but what the POV character sees, hears, smell, tastes and touches and his opinions … Read more

The Journal: Focus Down and Mentorships

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Topic: Focus Down and Mentorships * Update on my writing * WMG Workshops Half-Price Sale * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.” Stephen King in On Writing “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” Mark Twain in Following the Equator “On the focus of a story, she writes ‘…the only remedy is resolutely to abandon the larger for the smaller field, to narrow one’s vision to one’s … Read more