Writing Lives…lots of them…all the time…day and night…awake and asleep…I can't control it…
My first novel – historical military fiction – made it to the top 10 of 9 of Amazon's bestseller lists. Via my blog I share what I have learned while writing two more.
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I’ve not posted much recently. I have been heads down writing and reading to improve my craft. One of the books I’ve read is Stephen King’s On Writing. As a maturing writer, I’m attentive to writing, but also writers. I have long avoided this book because I really do not care for King’s writing. And to be honest, after having read this, I still don’t care for his novel writing.
I saw a question on a board the other day asking what does it mean to “practice writing”? This could be several things, but my view is that there are three things I practice. And to be clear, I think all writing is practice. Even the things I publish are not perfect. They were just good enough to publish.
Continue reading “How to write a book? Practice to improve your craft”
When we think about how to write a novel and to be a successful writer of fiction, we must understand the balance of showing versus telling in our work. This is one of the critical skills and one that we can learn. There is no formula, and we need to do both. The trick is to keep them in proper proportion.
Continue reading “When to “show” and when to “tell” in your fiction”
Came across this very cool post on StumbleUpon: 25 greatest Sci Fi novels ever. Check it out and see what you think. Nice summaries and engaging graphics.
Continue reading “The 25 Greatest Science Fiction novels ever? Damn close!”
Text to Speech (TTS) software is a surprisingly powerful tool to help you improve your writing. Whether you are writing a book, poetry or a business letter, hearing your words will allow you to perceive your words and sentences in a different way. Reading what you have written is one mental process. Hearing your words is a different process. There are subtle but important differences between the two. Listening to your words will enable you to detect errors and clunky sentences in your writing that you can’t “see” when you read your work. There are Microsoft text to speech tools, but those are not the only ones. Find — and use — one that works for you.