Micah Joel

The great Carl Sagan famously popularized the saying: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I’ve always disliked that saying. It was intended as a shout-out to objectivity, rationalism, and healthy skepticism, but it has the opposite effect for me. Any writer will tell you that overuse of adjectives will actually weaken the point the writer is trying [...]

Well, I crossed the 50 kiloword mark, and in NaNoWriMo terms, that means success. How this was the same as previous NaNos: I’m thrilled with my results. This is like interval training for writers, and I cranked out lots of words. Many of them crap, but some good stuff buried within. Every time I do [...]

The short piece I wrote at VP is now making the rounds. I ended up making quite a few changes based on some excellent feedback: new title, new POV, new focus, and entirely new first act. I’ve never been good at revision, so I take this as a sign that I might have actually learned [...]

If you own an ebook, you should at least be aware of the line of reasoning behind the Kindle Swindle campaign. Ebooks, in particular the DRM therein, deprive users of rights they would have with a conventional book. For example, lending a book to someone, or selling the used copy, or donating it to a [...]

Reviewers for a recent piece I’ve been working on uniformly hated one of my favorite lines, which introduced contemporary everyman-angst with something like Once the prices of beer and oil went into their current trajectory… The comments were that the reference didn’t fit in with the story (all too true), and that it didn’t make [...]