the league of reluctant adults

Hallelujah, I remembered to post! Every single month, I write my day down on my calendar. So why do I sometimes look right at the calendar and still forget to post? No idea. Being December and all, I considered a holiday-themed post, but I'm already talking Christmas over at Tynga's Reviews . I also considered a brief rant about the The Avengers character posters and how Black Widow is the only Avenger (and the token female) who's showing off her ass, but Carrie Vaughn said it better . So instead, I'm pulling out an old bit of advice, originally posted three years ago on my blog. It's about having a foundation in your writing. Every July, I attend a local SF/F convention called Shore Leave, and in '08 something said during a writing panel really stuck with me: I was in a writing panel Saturday afternoon , and one of the writer panelists (Howard Weinstein, FYI) was discussing discipline, which led one of the attendees to mention "inspiration." At which...

This is me with my didactic writer hat on (cross-posted from my main blog ): So... this past weekend I was at the Rainforest Writer’s Village writer’s retreat out on the Olympic Peninsula. I’d never been to a writer’s retreat before and this was kind of interesting. Because this was my first time and because the organizer had prodded me firmly with a virtual poke, I had agreed to lead a couple of discussions. Or workshops. Or something like that. It was pretty casual. And I said I would because that’s what you do when someone reminds you that people did such things for you when you were a newbie and “paying it forward” is good karma. So, arm properly twisted (but not very far) I said I’d talk on a couple of topics that I’ve been poking at a lot lately: Voice and Setting. Not together, but as two separate occasions. So let me start with Setting... (with apologies to Don McQuinn who first kicked my ass about this and as a result the setting in the Greywalker novels became almost a chara...

Ever come up with a word that makes perfect sense in your head, then makes you cringe/cry/LOL as soon as you actually type it? I've been doing some world-building on a potential new project, and I needed a slang word for penitentiary guards. First thought was Peni guard, which I then shortened to Peni. Works perfectly, yes? Until I needed to pluralize it for a sentence. This is what I typed: The Penis hated him on principal . My cat woke up and glared at me for laughing so hard. What have you written lately that compares?

It's the 2nd of January. Already. The holidays have come, gone and left their droppings all over the League clubhouse. There's cleaning to do, grocery shopping, exercise, a trip to the post office. Plus we've got the new book club set to go (HEART OF STONE, pick it up and read, bitches). It's all too much. Aaaaaaah! Writing is my day job and it's still hard to find the time. So how do you juggle all of life's demands and still put together a story worth reading? No...seriously...how? I could tell you that it's all about the time management, prioritizing, lists, PROSEC (or Prozac, for that matter). But really, it's boils down to focus and enjoying the process. You know those moments where you get into your own story, laughing along with the characters or at them, feeling the tension as a particularly suspensful scene unfolds? Those are moments to remember, to celebrate. They sustain us. They are our runner's high. So--I know--that doesn't...