Here’s a recent trend I can get behind: shared worldbuilding. Mur deserves credit as one of the pioneers here, with the rollout of Playing For Keeps and all the Stories of the Third Wave. Another that caught my eye was the Mongoliad, a serial novel by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and others, with lots of fan participation including artwork and stories (and nitpicking).…
onwriting
Important stuff first: food. When I started this recurring blog post it was about all the food items that could be found on my desk, but then something happened: I got braces. Eating anything is now a weighty decision that will end in an extended hygiene task.…
After an epic cleaning session last month, things were pretty rough for a while. And by rough, I mean tidy on the desk. But now the iPad is back on my desk, to play Pandora. The new webapp is cool, but it uses so much memory over time that it chokes my system.…
One thing I’ve picked up from acquiring editors and slush readers is that some view Standard Manuscript Format as a kind of IQ test. If a potential author can’t even follow simple, straightforward instructions, it’s easy and justified to simply toss out that submission and move on to the next.…
- Writer writes story.
- Writer submits story to market.
- Market requires submissions in Standard Manuscript Format.
- Market requires submissions as DOC or RTF.
This narrative plays itself out every day. But it’s a problem for users like me that don’t rely on Microsoft tools.
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Amy had a thoughtful post about blogging and other social media for writers. She wrote
I hate the thought of the dutiful yet miserable blogger.
Which made me reflect on this blog, which I admittedly update infrequently. Is it a chore for me?…