Work has been kicking my butt, so I’m going to talk about starting my rewrite tomorrow instead.
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Tag Archives: work
I Didn’t Hate It #24
Training about a month in a new job can be a nice opportunity to recalibrate and get back on track with what matters at work, now that the general confusion seems to have dissipated.
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Writing is Hard Part 3: Graduate School
It didn’t feel right to talk about this before I finished my graduate school work. So, here I am in this candid moment to tell you about balancing graduate school and writing. I don’t feel the most qualified, as I don’t have an agent, don’t have anything published, and have trunked a project. But I did write 2+ books in 15 months, so that’s…something.
Author to Author with S.A. Chakraborty
Happy book day to Shan Chakraborty’s City of Brass, a lush epic fantasy about a con artist whisked off to an enchanting world to discover who she really is. There is magic, sword fights, and political intrigue sprinkled throughout and finely woven together. As the book is also Shan’s debut, I invited her to take time to talk about world-building, process, critique groups, and publishing. Shan and I are also part of the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers group together, an excellent community of writers working on projects in science fiction, fantasy, and everything in between.
Author to Author with Fran Wilde
Horizon, the finale to The Bone Universe, comes out today! With intricate world-building, breath-taking settings, and complex characters, I was hooked on Fran Wilde’s writing from the first page of Updraft. Fran took time to talk about her writing process across formats and stories. Her novels and short stories have been nominated for two Nebula awards and a Hugo, with Updraft winning the Andre Norton and Compton Crook awards. I had the delight of meeting her at BookCon 2015 at a group storytelling panel with Tor.
Writing is Hard Part 1: Hiatus
Originally, this was going to be about how I always hit a point in my writing where I want to delete my book. Turns out, it was just a symptom of burning out. So, I’m talking about the necessity to take a break sometimes and common thought processes that can interrupt it.
(Photo by Ilham Rahmansyah on Unsplash)
Author to Author with Elliott Junkyard
Elliott and I are bona fide internet contacts turned critique partners turned best friends (who are probably the same person). He took some time to answer a few questions on self-inserts, inspiration, and when short form accidentally turns serial. You can find his work here. It’s also his birthday month.
Burn Out
People need fuel to survive, like food and water. There’s also the goop that lets people pursue the work they do with the intensity and love it deserves. What happens when you’re going too hard on projects and seem to neglect the important break time between tasks?
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My Westworld Review
At some peer pressure and falling into personal interest territory, I decided to watch Westworld. Based on the 1973 film of the same name by Michael Crichton, it’s another romp through a scary, ill-thought-out amusement park. It does for the Wild West what Game of Thrones did for medieval times: It’s not at all fun and there are no clear-cut heroes and villains.
Rewrite 3: Finding a Common Thread
Recently, I went to an event with the amazing Victor LaValle and we talked about the course in introductory novel writing that he teaches. What stuck out to me was that he said that many beginner writers lack focus in this work. There’s an . And I realized that that was totally true about my work during the first draft, way back in college when my writing was actual trash.
Jo Writes Fantasy 