Columns

9 Modern Tools Every Writer Should Use

January 24th, 2013

I have a friend who types only on typewriters. His study is full of them; he and his girlfriend, he told me, feel bad for these dying symbols of the writing craft. Any time they see one in a shop window they have to "adopt it." There's a romance to this notion, but my own approach takes the opposite route: As soon as a modern tool proves it can make me more effective, I sink my teeth into it. Here are nine tools I've found to be especially useful to both my creative writing and my freelance career.

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Library Love : The Sexy Librarian And Our Collective Imagination

January 23rd, 2013

There’s no use denying it: men and women alike are familiar with the image of the sexy librarian. If you’d like to conduct some research on the subject, I recommend you start with two arenas: fashion and porn. In my view, nowhere else can you get such a clearly defined image of the stereotype.

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Adventures in Self-Publishing Part 6: Fare Thee Well

January 23rd, 2013

There are a lot of things I wish I did better. One of those things is: Maintain a more rigorous writing schedule, something I've never been very good at (I have the attention span of oh my god I just saw something shiny). One of the things that keeps me from writing is that I spend an awful lot of time writing about writing. And it's a gas. I love doing it. It ain't like I'm never going to do it again. But I think I need to cut back a bit.

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Bringing the Lie to Life: What Your First Two Pages Can Tell You

January 22nd, 2013

I was once running a workshop at the Boulder Writing Studio when a student handed me a list. It had been compiled by a man named Gordon Mennenga, of Coe College, and had been passed around after the University of Iowa Writing Festival in Iowa City, until it ended up in my hands, here in Colorado. Unlike most such lists we see passed around writers circles, it was not a list of must-read books, and it was not a list of common mistakes writers should avoid, and, as much as most of us may have wanted it to be, it was not a list of Glengary-like leads on agents and editors.

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Extraordinary Leagues: Crossovers in Fantasy

January 22nd, 2013

There’s something compelling about the idea of the crossover, of taking characters from different settings, sometimes even different worlds, and having them interact. There’s an intriguing juxtaposition of the familiar with the new, and changing the context of a character can often illuminate them in ways that might not have been obvious before. This idea pops up in comics, film, and of course in literature.

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Ask The Agent: When Should You Stop Querying?

January 21st, 2013

Navigating the rough terrain of today’s publishing industry shouldn’t be a solo event. This week in Ask the Agent, I’ll explore and dissect one of the industry’s mysteries, straight from the shoulder.

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LURID: Happy Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!

January 18th, 2013

LURID: vivid in shocking detail; sensational, horrible in savagery or violence, or, a guide to the merits of the kind of Bad Books you never want your co-workers to know you're reading.

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Sequel Status: How Does 'The Twelve' Stack Up To 'The Passage'?

January 18th, 2013

The Twelve is Justin Cronin’s sequel to the generations-straddling vampire epic The Passage, the second in a trilogy that will be completed in 2014 with The City of Mirrors. And when I say vampire trilogy, I certainly understand your hesitation. “I’m a grown-up,” you might argue. “I read grown-up books.”

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Kickstarter Campaign vs. Kickstarter Reality

January 17th, 2013

Back in August of 2012, after the end of my first (and only) Kickstarter, I wrote about the experience and offered some advice on how to run a successful campaign. Now that more time has passed, and all the emails have been sent, the rewards have been mailed, the packages have been shipped, and the credit card has been thoroughly exercised, where do things stand? Did I make any money? Did I love it or hate it? And most importantly, would I do it again?

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7 Strategies to Outsmart Writer's Block

January 16th, 2013

Header by Rob Young A writer who has never experienced writer's block probably hasn't written very much. Overcoming writer's block isn't as simple as "just writing" or "willing through" the difficulty. However, by understanding writer's block, you can employ strategies that let you maneuver around the problem, effectively outsmarting this common adversary of writers around the world.

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