Off the map

I did something yesterday I hadn’t done in two weeks. I wrote. And it felt good. I’ve been working on revisions to my latest Mighty Tome, trying in particular to shorten and tighten the narrative, especially in the front end, and it was going pretty well. On July 12, I hit the hundred page mark–and […]

Wandering in the Fog

The beauty of being a wingman is that you can start with an empty page and the briefest glimmer of an idea–it doesn’t have to be an overarching idea for a novel, either; it can be a character or a single scene with almost no context at all–and start writing. At the end of the […]

Weekend Update: Change Is Good

If you’ve been reading this space for any length of time, then you’re almost certainly aware that I am a card-carrying member of that subset of writers known as ‘Wingman’. I am not a planner, not an outliner, not a plotter. I plunk myself down at the keyboard and start writing and just let it […]

The Home Stretch

At this point, there’s a week and a day left to NaNo (or just a week for my friends down under)–how’s it going? Are you absolutely insane yet? Ready to tear out your hair or chuck your computer (or whatever you write upon) out the window? Hopefully you haven’t crumbled under the pressure. Hopefully you’ve […]

Tag, etc.

First, my apologies to all of you. I know you sat around all day waiting for my usual Friday post. Workplace productivity suffered, the market took a tumble, men and women beat their breasts and tore their hair….Or not. Anyway, because I never quite pre-write as much as I want, so that posting is a […]

Inside a Wingman’s Brain

When it comes to writing, I am a wingman. My completed novels were started on the basis of simple ideas and written without the benefit of any outlines. I started one with a character in mind, and the other based on a situation. While I thought about both stories in advance, when I sat down […]

The Wing Man

First, before anything else, I must acknowledge the passing of arguably ‘the greatest sci-fi writer in history’ (though he would no doubt argue with the designation ‘sci-fi writer’), Ray Bradbury earlier this week. He was apparently writing pretty much to the end. You will be missed. Next, this post is not about a guy running […]