Hello. I have found another book about my craft: Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. It is from 1934, as near as I can tell, and it is not about how to write with good technique. She wrote it to help her students banish writer’s block. The book describes common problems and situations she has…

At last, the second draft of my science fiction story is finished! It felt a little odd to suddenly not have that go-to task. It is put away now, out of sight and out of mind until July’s NaNoWriMo event. I’d like to make a bigger deal about this being the one year anniversary of…

OK, I admit, I had to force the alliteration. Success! Almost. I have less than one scene to rewrite, and I will be done with editing the first draft! I’m a little concerned that this will be a difficult scene to get right, since there is so much dialogue. It’s basically a huge explanation. Still,…

At long last, I have reached a different section of my science fiction story. Progress is still painstakingly slow, yet steady. Then my friend suggested that I had been forcing myself to work on this for too long and needed a break. After some consideration, I chose to focus on other projects for this week.…

Since I last posted here, one of my confidants told someone else, a professional, that I am a writer. I was uncomfortable with that. The professional immediately asked if I had made any money from it, if I had published anything. My confidant correctly answered “No” to both questions. Because those answers are no, I…

January. A new year. I have reconsidered announcing this website in 2023. I started it with the intention to not use it for a while, after all. Last April, before I bought the website hosting services or the domain name, while I was still researching how to start one and was quite frustrated by the…

First things first: I won the NaNoWriMo challenge! This is my third year participating, and my third win. Hooray! (I have a dream of never missing one.) I took a few days afterward to make sure the draft I created was complete. It still needs an awful lot of editing, but it has all the…

Hello – guess what? I’m ahead!The NaNoWriMo challenge is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. So, per day, that means 1,667 words. And the website has a bunch of badges you can win. They are just little virtual stickers, but they are motivating. One of those badges is to reach the 1,667 words every…

Well, I am halfway through the second draft of my science fiction work. Rewriting is easier, because most of the words are there in front of me already, and harder, because there is a lot of second guessing involved. I test different orders of scenes and name things that only had placeholders before. I have…

Let me confirm what you have probably guessed; I have not advertised this website. Practically no one knows about it yet – I have told two people how to find it, that is all. Imagine my surprise when I found a notice telling me I needed to moderate a comment. Some one had commented on…