The marathon of writing is almost here. As you probably know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is to write an entire novel in one month – that’s 50,000 words! With only 30 days to complete your masterpiece you don’t have a lot of time (if any) to carefully think out your plot, characters, setting, etc. And forget about an outline. I think that’s the point of NaNoWriMo – turn off your inner critic and just write.

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I have a confession to make: I’m a news junkie. I like to know what’s going on in the world. In the morning, before heading off for work, I’ll watch the morning news while eating breakfast. At night I’ll turn it on to make sure the world is still spinning. Over time, however, I have noticed there is an inverse relationship between news and creativity: The more news I watch, the more my creativity goes down.

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I just wanted to post a quick note to say that my internet at home is currently down. We are getting some upgrades and they turned our DSL off yesterday. Should be back up by tonight, if not, then soon. Currently I’m sitting at a local Starbucks using their WiFi and enjoying a nice caffeine buzz from a mocha latte.

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I’ve always been in love with short fiction. It’s precise like poetry, yet can take you to new worlds like the novel. There was a time when the short story was a popular form of entertainment. But the last few decades have seen a decline in popularity of short fiction, to the point where writers get paid mostly in contributor copies. Now, the short story is making its grand comeback. Continue Reading

Today as I was driving to run an errand it hit me that slowing down in life, not just while driving, can really help your writing. You are probably thinking “Brad has finally lost it.” Well that might be true, but here’s the premise of what I was thinking: By slowing down, you notice your surroundings more. You notice little details that you’d otherwise miss. And your brain has a chance to process all this information because you’re not running around like a maniac trying to do 20 things at once.

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Back in July I downloaded Scrivener, a comprehensive tool for writers that organizes everything from drafts, notes and outlines. It is a very powerful program and offer flexibility that lets individual writers tailor it to his/her needs. After a few months of use and using up their generous 30-day free trial, I’m writing a follow-up to my original post on Scrivener.

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One debate that continues for fiction writers is whether or not to use an outline for planning your story in advance, or to just write and let the story develop on its own. I’ve written about this at least twice before, the last time was back in July in my post More on writing without an outline. In that post I argued that maybe it is better for the story to be more spontaneous and to let it develop as it is written. But even since writing that post, I’m still sitting on the fence about whether or not to use an outline at all.

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Anyone who thinks a writer should take a passive role in marketing and promoting of his/her work to concentrate on writing needs to talk to self-published author Christopher Herz about the importance of self-promotion. Herz quit his day job in advertising to concentrate on selling his book The Last Block in Harlem to one customer at a time.

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When I first began studying literature in college, I thought of literature as something pure – far removed from the superficial world of pop culture. I had read a lot of popular fiction in my life, but all that went out the window when I began dissecting literature at the college level. Looking back now I realize that I was a tad bit too idealistic in my thinking and I now realize that yes, even literature is subject to the whims of pop culture.

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The image of a reclusive writer locked away in a little home office, pounding away at a keyboard while writing masterpiece after masterpiece is a very romantic image. And it is also a very cliched image. Writers have long been stereotyped as lonesome, reclusive, slightly unstable characters who don’t get out much.

That may have been true for a lot of famous writers in the past, but is it possible to be a reclusive writer in today’s uber-connected world? My guess is that it is probably not possible. More than that, however, I think to be a good writer, one needs to go out and experience the world.

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