Some professionals say it doesn’t exist. But I say it does. I’ve seen it. It crawled up my leg one day and bit me so hard that I was speechless–wordless, so to speak. Pretty much anyone who has tried to put words on paper (screen?) has had those moments that threaten to turn into hours … More The myth about the myth about writer’s block

I’m looking forward to school starting. Really. Because this fall I get to teach one of my favorite classes. The class Feature Writing is unique because there is very little lecturing, but a great deal of learning. The premise behind the class is that students write seven feature articles, and are required to get four … More The truth about editors

I wrote yesterday about outlining your work, providing a basic skeleton for the masterpiece-in-the-making. Once you’ve gotten that first chapter written, then a second, and a third, and you feel you are on a roll, it’s going to be a strong temptation to just keep going and write the whole thing while it is in … More Dangling the bait

Last week I made the comment that: “Writing is easy. You just have to know where to start, where to stop, and what to put in between.” In essence, what I was talking about there was the outline. Now I can already hear many of you groaning, thinking back to your junior high days when … More The Outline

Writing is easy. Writing is fun. Writing is a pain in the butt. Writing is possibly the most difficult thing you will ever do. All of the above are true. How can opposite descriptions be true of the same thing? It depends. (Sound familiar, students from Digital Photography?) Most people have this idea of a … More Now comes the fun part….

Yesterday I talked about how important it was for the writer to visualize what it is he or she is describing. The whole purpose of writing–from my perspective, and from a communication theory perspective–is to take an idea in Person A’s mind and recreate it as faithfully as possible in Person B’s mind. Without getting … More Seeing the story

In my thousand years or so of writing, I have had probably two or three moments when inspiration set upon me like a caveman with a club. I specifically remember one Sunday morning back when we were living in Illinois. I woke up early, a particularly vivid dream stuck in my head. I was motivated–nay, … More Waiting for the Muse

Early on in my writing career, I read or heard somewhere that a writer couldn’t consider himself a “serious” writer until after he or she had written their first million words. Orson Scott Card further qualifies this by saying the first million “serious, polished words.” I was thinking about that statement last night, and considered … More Whatever it takes