Oh, December. We meet again. In the season of stress and excess, a breezy batch of suggestions for how to keep writing through the holidays might be as well-received as Tracy Flick’s earnest-bordering-on-psycho campaign for student body president in the…
Sometimes I drive myself crazy. I procrastinate. I suffer from imposter syndrome. And to be perfectly honest, I’m a little lazy. But over the years, I’ve monitored my writing habits and learned techniques to leverage my weaknesses, as well as…
In my last post, I was about to leave for Germany to do some research for my novel. I had two precious days in Leipzig, my protagonist’s hometown. The city is less than two hours by train from Berlin. About…
Sure, you’ve shown us compelling details. The contents of your character’s medicine cabinet or their elaborate grooming rituals or how they behave in a traffic jam. But the sentient beings whose stories we tell have gotta eat. Are you using that…
By the time you read this post, I’ll have visited my protagonist’s hometown, Leipzig, Germany. I expect the city will be strange to both of us—I’ve never been there and he, Viktor, left home in 1942 to join Hitler’s army….
It is a fact that this author, upon completing a book, faced with the challenge of writing another book in short order, will stare into the abyss and say, “Not today, Satan.” There are always these moments of resistance, of…