Have a goal, a simple achievable one. Not simple as in easy, but simple as in not complex. 'Write a novel' is simple (not easy.) 'Write 3000 words per week, or two chapters, every other week poetry counts as x2 word count, weekends don't count, and each story submitted counts as an extra thousand words …
Challenge
Remember when I said I was going to write another novel instead of shorts? Then when I said no wait, I'm going to work on editing? Well, now I've got some other plan. I'm going to sell a story to Clarkesworld, and keep writing stories until I do. If it means I write a novel …
Nested narratives
I'm about 3/4 done with Cloud Atlas and am starting to see the design of it. And it's really great. At first I thought that the first three, maybe even four narratives had no relevance to the final two, where the action and interest really kicked off. But now, as I begin to see how …
Voices
Sometimes I'm reading and I think 'I could stand you forever', and other times I want to toss the book aside from waiting for the character to change. But each character, and narrator, should have their own unique voice. Because, the narrator isn't 'you'. You are an actor playing the part of the narrator--and the characters--when …
Brainstorming
I finished the short story I was writing, and now I'm already planning the next novel. Shorts are too short! I want to dig in and put some real thought and effort into something again. This one is going to be a murder mystery... in space. It has a lot more characters than I usually …
Jonas David 