So I’m NOT writing a novel this month. But, in the spirit of NaNo I’m cranking out 50,000+ words anyway. On what you may ask? Rewrites on the sequel to How to Succeed in Evil, Hostile Takeover will take up some of that. So will a HtSiE novella called “Consultation with a Vampire.” I’m happy…
Category Archives: writing
In Praise of NaNoWriMo
So here’s the question: How do you get some kind of handle on the often mercurial process of writing? Answers vary from writer to writer, but the question remains eternal. One good answer is NaNoWriMo. If you don’t already know, November is National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in 30…
An Interview with John Mierau
A week ago (hey, was it two?) I spent some quality time talking to John Mierau for his “Podcast Teardown” series. It’s a great idea. The Teardown is a mini-series of 10 questions on the nature of podcasting, put to 10 well-known podcast authors. The questions are the same. The answers might just surprise you….
The Spiritual Questions Raised By Unkillable
Nothing ever means exactly what it means. It’s the fundamental reason that writing is difficult. For example, if I write the word orange, I might imagine the burnt orange of a brilliant sunset I once saw in the Joshua Tree National Forest. The orange that you imagine when you read that word can be very…
What All Great Stories Are About
Hidden at the core of every story that really moves me — every story has depth and character and sustains my interest — is the same quest. It’s the struggle for self-knowledge. And any story, no matter how well constructed or crafted that isn’t (in some way) about a character’s self-discovery, feels two-dimensional and cheap…
Please don’t write like this.
Things happen. Then there are results. The word that should be used in the last sentence of this awful copy is “happens” As it stands, this is simply barbarous. Posted via email from PatrickEMcLean’s Posterous
“The Road to Hell is Paved with Adverbs”
January isn’t even over yet and I can already see that 2010 is going to be a HUGE year. One of the things that I’m very excited about is that I’m going to get spend most of my time helping people improve their writing. This is a move that’s been four years in the making…
Helping a guy get his break
So I’ve written a novel, called How to Succeed in Evil. It’s a wonderful satire of Supervillians and Corporate Culture. The main character is a man named Edwin Windsor, who helps villians be more profitable and successful. He’s kind of like Arthur Anderson for Lex Luthor. Anyway, I’ve put it online as a free, serialized…
The Best Resume Ever?
Is this really the best resume ever? It’s definitely in the running.
What January’s writing looks like.
I put my writing log into a sparkline using Ubiquity and this is what I got. The highest peaks are two 3,000 word days, the average peak is 1000 words and the flat spots are, well, zero. (I was skiing those days January 09: