A few months ago, to gear up for DMing a D&D3.5 game, I searched for digital copies of the core rulebooks. After hours futilely scanning Wizards of the Coast’s website, I determined they weren’t selling any. Oh noes! How would I find a digital copy so I don’t carry those heavy hardcopies around for all my brainstorming sessions?
I’ve stated that I write 1,000 words/day and read over 90 books/year. “Yeah, that’s great,” you say, “But you can’t possibly know that!”
Introducing: Writing and Reading Tracker
Continue reading Track Your Writing (or why a watched pot actually boils faster!)
It’s been 3 years since my last writing workshop and my ass still hurts. In a few short semesters, I’d grown embittered, defensive, and drained of creative drive. Since then, I’ve spoken to other Workshop Survivors, heard their woeful tales, and slowly internalized hard lessons about the Writing Life. I’ve heard as many people say the workshop hurt their writing as helped.
Here’s a few lessons from a Survivor on how to get all you can from your workshop:
In my previous entry, I touched incidentally on my aversion to stories set in the “real world”. I didn’t have this problem growing up — although I preferred fantasy and science fiction stories, I consumed far more contemporary realism, mystery, and suspense stories, at least in High School. Continue reading Real World Blues
During my group’s New Years’ Eve party, one of my friends since before High School and I got to discussing what we’d been watching lately.
“I’ve been enjoying Shakugan no Shana,” I said. I am, as usual, late to the scene, but to my surprise my friend, with much more free time on his hands, had just finished watching the second season, so I was only one behind. Continue reading Creator or Critic?
My writing buddy read a recent story that I’m working on set in Aemon-Tor, my constructed world. I wrote that a character simultaneously saw a waxing gibbous and a waning crescent in the sky. He told me this was impossible.
Screeching halt.
Gregory Blake 