Books

Book Project – Day Five

February 4, 2012

Welcome to Day Five which is already in progress.  Actually, as I write this it is Day Five.  Reporting is off by one day, see.  Ah, well.
On the fifth day, 6 of 26 stories have been either rewritten or edited, and are (I hope and trust) ready to go.
The title of the collection has been [...]

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Book Project – Day Three

February 2, 2012

How hard can it be to take 26 stories which have already passed muster in a different world, and prep them to go into their own book?
Really.  What’s the difference whether it is one story, or 26?  How the world does adding more stories make it harder?
I admit it.  I’ve found the first big hurdle. [...]

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Book Project – Day Two

February 1, 2012

Day two dawned crisp and clear… and cold.  So I went back to bed.
I couldn’t stay in bed, though.  Nope, that little vice… erm, voice, that sits on my shoulder to remind me of all the reasons I should not be a writer started acting up and reminding me of the wonderful opportunities available for [...]

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Book Project – Day One

January 31, 2012

As promised, I began my (next?) (first?) (ongoing?) book project this morning.  Actually, I got excited last night a cheated a bit, and got a leg up on the process before turning in last night.
I’ve amassed 26 short stories, four of which are short-short-stories—an old favorite sub-genre—and I pasted them all into a Word document, [...]

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Have You Read Shakespeare in the Original Russian?

January 27, 2012

Yes, Checkov (Pavel, not Anton) once quipped that he had read Shakespeare in the original Russian.  I always liked that, as it harked back to the cold-war days where the US and the USSR were always vying for firsts in space and technology.  Of course we know that Shakespeare did not write in Russian, he [...]

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How Many Books Can You Read?

January 27, 2012

Most writers I know bemoan their lack of time to read.  Life gets in the way, they say, and I can see how it does.
Even those of us who are retired—be it in the lap of luxury, or holding the wolf at bay on the other side of the door—are preoccupied with any number of [...]

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Still Searching for Humanity

January 6, 2012

What makes a character human?  Could it be as little as describing him or her in “normal” terms, and letting the reader make assumptions?  Frankly, many writers do not go further than that.  These writers are known for creating “Plot Driven” rather than “Character Driven” stories.  So, what?  You ask.
Many of us—perhaps most of us—appreciate [...]

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Is Killing Off Your Characters Too Easy?

January 3, 2012

You’ve been working on your novel for months, and it has grown to the point of unwieldiness.  Too many characters are bouncing back and forth in the halls of your large and unmapped setting.  Too many plot twists and bits have been generated, too many dead herrings left to deal with.
What to do?  What to [...]

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Twilight Time… or Dawn of a New Era?

December 31, 2011

Sometimes it seems that writers, especially writers of quirky fiction, are like a family waiting in a storm cellar.  They know the storm is coming, they think they might be hit, and being hit by a storm is devastating.
From the beginning on Uphill Writing, a recurrent theme has been, “is the time of writers over?”  Are [...]

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Grabbing Your Reader With Your First Sentence

December 17, 2011

I opened the book and a hand shot out of the page, grasping me by the collar; it pulled me, nose to print.  “Read,” a voice commanded, “this!”

Over the years I have wondered what it really takes to grab the reader in the first line.

Nora Profit says that the first sentence, every sentence, needs to [...]

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