Category: writing
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How the Author Brain Ruins Normal Life: A Field Guide
There are many afflictions in this world, but none quite as persistent, ridiculous, or quietly feral as Author Brain. If you have it, you already know. If you don’t, congratulations on your peaceful, single-layered existence. Send me a post-card from wherever you live. I’ll put it on my fridge and think of you with envy…
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The Unglamorous Truths of Drafting, Revising, and Surviving Character Mutiny
People love the glamorous version of writing. You know the one, right? The ethereal writer sitting beside a window with a cup of tea (in my case, jasmine), gently plucking words from the breeze. The story flows. The characters cooperate. The muse hums like a well-trained choir. Angels descend from heaven and all that jazz. …
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Welcome to the Jungle, I Mean, Welcome to Beautiful Chaos
There are things no one tells you when you decide to write a novel. They’ll tell you it’s rewarding and meaningful. They’ll tell you to trust the process. What they won’t tell you is that writing a novel will quietly hijack your daily life and turn you into someone who mutters conversations between fictional people while unloading the…
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Juggling Multiple Timelines, Reincarnated Lovers, and a Sleep-Powered Brain
There are easy stories. You know the type–one timeline. One setting. One character arc that politely stays in its lane. Stories where cause and effect walk hand in hand like well-behaved children. And then there are the other stories.The ones that insist on reincarnation. The ones with timelines that arc, cross, collide, and then jog…
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A Short Blog on Short Form
We writers love to debate which form demands the most grit. Novelists claim they trek across epic landscapes armed with nothing but caffeine and plot holes. Flash fiction writers like to say they perform delicate surgery with sentences the size of breadcrumbs. Short stories camp out right in the middling, to quote my favorite Witcher. At…