Tag Archives: writing

Breaking the Author – Week Twenty One

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It’s Monday, May 30th. Which means this post is a day late, but whatever, let’s get to it!

I’ll be brief this week because I’ve got a lot of stuff to do before going back to work tomorrow. A fair amount of my time has been taken up with home stuff as I’m preparing to take over my two-bedroom apartment in full instead of sharing it with a roommate. So shopping and planning and all the chores that go with keeping up the place now fall directly on my shoulders.

Which is to say that it’s my excuse for not getting as much done as I’d have liked. Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Twenty

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It’s May 22nd, 2016. Let’s talk about goals and things!

My goals for Second Quarter of 2016 (April-June) are as follows:

  • Finish Shapes 1 Editing and Self-Publish It
  • Finish Writing Game Year 1 Editing and Release It For Free
  • Finish Writing Game Year 2
  • Finish Shapes 2 Writing
  • Plot Shapes 3 for Third Quarter Posting
  • Write Four Short Stories
  • Submit Three Short Stories
  • Finish Gridfall Editing and Begin Submitting to Agents
  • Maintain the blog

Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Eighteen

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It’s May 8th, 2016. Let’s talk about goals and things!

My goals for Second Quarter of 2016 (April-June) are as follows:

  • Finish Shapes 1 Editing and Self-Publish It
  • Finish Writing Game Year 1 Editing and Release It For Free
  • Finish Writing Game Year 2
  • Finish Shapes 2 Writing
  • Plot Shapes 3 for Third Quarter Posting
  • Write Four Short Stories
  • Submit Three Short Stories
  • Finish Gridfall Editing and Begin Submitting to Agents
  • Maintain the blog

Here’s the brief accomplishments toward these goals: Continue reading →

Writers Don’t Just Read, They Examine

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One of the most common “tips” you are likely to hear for writers is that you have to read. And read a lot. Read in your genre. Read out of your genre. Read everything.

I completely agree with this and it’s going to be somewhat my focus for this post.

If you want to be a filmmaker, you should be a fan of film. If you want to make sculptures, you should know about sculpting. If you want to be a coder, you need to know coding languages.

If you want to be a writer, you have to read similar writing to what you want to write. There’s a few good reasons for why this is so: Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Seventeen

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It’s May 1st, 2016. First four months down!

My goals for Second Quarter of 2016 (April-June) are as follows:

  • Finish Shapes 1 Editing and Self-Publish It
  • Finish Writing Game Year 1 Editing and Release It For Free
  • Finish Writing Game Year 2
  • Finish Shapes 2 Writing
  • Plot Shapes 3 for Third Quarter Posting
  • Write Four Short Stories
  • Submit Three Short Stories
  • Finish Gridfall Editing and Begin Submitting to Agents
  • Maintain the blog

Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Sixteen

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It’s April 24th, 2016. Sixteen weeks and one left in April, let’s do that update thing again!

My goals for Second Quarter of 2016 (April-June) are as follows:

  • Finish Shapes 1 Editing and Self-Publish It
  • Finish Writing Game Year 1 Editing and Release It For Free
  • Finish Writing Game Year 2
  • Finish Shapes 2 Writing
  • Plot Shapes 3 for Third Quarter Posting
  • Write Four Short Stories
  • Submit Three Short Stories
  • Finish Gridfall Editing and Begin Submitting to Agents
  • Maintain the blog

So a quick rundown of what I accomplished towards these goals: Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Fifteen

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It’s April 17th, 2016. Fifteen weeks have come and gone for 2016, so let’s talk about our progress!

My goals for Second Quarter of 2016 (April-June) are as follows:

  • Finish Shapes 1 Editing and Self-Publish It
  • Finish Writing Game Year 1 Editing and Release It For Free
  • Finish Writing Game Year 2
  • Finish Shapes 2 Writing
  • Plot Shapes 3 for Third Quarter Posting
  • Write Four Short Stories
  • Submit Three Short Stories
  • Finish Gridfall Editing and Begin Submitting to Agents
  • Maintain the blog

So a quick rundown of what I accomplished towards these goals: Continue reading →

Description Description Description

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It’s Thursday, and that means time to ramble.

What’s in a description? When you’re writing a scene, sometimes you want to get all the details down. What’s the room look like? What’s it smell like? Who’s in the room, and what do THEY look and smell like? What are they doing from second to second? Who simpers playfully and who remarks with anger? What are they wearing? Is it important to know what they’re wearing?  Continue reading →

Breaking the Author – Week Fourteen

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It’s April 10th, 2016. It’s time to throw an update full of words at you!

My goals for Second Quarter of 2016 (April-June) are as follows:

  • Finish Shapes 1 Editing and Self-Publish It
  • Finish Writing Game Year 1 Editing and Release It For Free
  • Finish Writing Game Year 2
  • Finish Shapes 2 Writing
  • Plot Shapes 3 for Third Quarter Posting
  • Write Four Short Stories
  • Submit Three Short Stories
  • Finish Gridfall Editing and Begin Submitting to Agents
  • Maintain the blog

Continue reading →

Should You Limit Yourself to One Genre?

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It’s Thursday here at Panning For Clouds and that means I’m gonna ramble on about something that’s been stuck in my head for a while, that is probably in some way related to writing, editing, or publishing.

You ready for this?

So as the article’s title suggests, there’s often this THING in the publishing world that you hear about. “We want to publish your detective novels, not your sci fi novels.” “You should only write fantasy because it’s the thing people like the most.” “We have no interest in publishing out of genre.”

Now, granted, I would love to have that problem, because it means I have landed a successful story somewhere. But the point is that it’s a commonly held belief in the publishing industry and elsewhere that authors should be writing in one genre because of a variety of reasons. Continue reading →