A year ago, I wrote two posts for Writer Unboxed on the subject of troubling developments on the publishing front, both concerned with restricting access to certain books and subject matters: Good Intentions and the Pathway to Hell, Part 1: Book Bans and Good Intentions and the Pathway to Hell, Part 2: Sensitivity Readers. These two phenomena mirror each other, in that one (book banning) is largely a response to the cultural concerns underlying the other, concerns often derided as “woke.” But book banning is only one weapon in the anti-woke arsenal. As Conor Friedersdorf noted in an article f ..read more

photo adapted / Horia Varlan Thanks to the 24/7 information kiosk that is the internet, anyone with a smart phone can now become a lay doctor. This can be handy if you wake up in the middle of the night with a stabbing pain and learn that the burst appendix you feared was probably just gas. But for a while now, I’ve been wondering if immediate access to all things medical is always good news for novelists. Back before it only took a tap of the finger to paste a celebrity photo onto a Pinterest board or borrow a bio from a known sociopath, writers imagined their characters into existence ..read more

This year I decided to try my hand at screenwriting. I didn’t think it would be radically different, and in a way, I was right. Everything I’d learned about character and plotting gave me a leg up on initial creation. But when it came to actually writing the story, in that format, the difference was mind-blowing. Here are the biggest takeaways I’ve gleaned… so far, anyway. I sense there’s even more I’ve yet to learn. IMPACT. Imagine taking a 300-500 page novel, and then carving it down to 90-120 pages, without summarizing or losing depth. Much like equipping a sailboat, every bit of usable “s ..read more

As a young writer, I worried so much about my ideas. I worried that I’d never come up with any that were special enough to build a novel around; I worried that if I did come up with one, someone else would “take” it. Several decades in, I now have a more balanced view, which is this: the main concept of a book, its idea, may be important, but it is also only a tiny fraction of what determines whether a book works. And there are countless ways to take the same central idea and write it into a book… or books. A few years back I had the idea that someone should write “a matriarchal Game of Thron ..read more

You know what it’s like: you carve out time to write, sit down at your desk with your favorite notebook or software and…your mind draws a blank. Or perhaps you’re a swirling vortex of story ideas, plot problems, anxiety about whether your writing will be ‘good enough’. So you put off writing until you’ve completed all those suddenly-important tasks you’ve been avoiding for days. (Surely you’ll be able to focus after you’ve cleaned your desk and emptied the trash and, oh look, here’s an odd sock that ought to be in the laundry…) Then, if you do get started, you write around a topic or a few pa ..read more

There are some seismic shifts in this month’s roundup. A potentially disturbing development—Meta discussed buying Simon & Schuster to train AI. Yep, you read that right. Meta would then own books published by S&S. AI is nosing in on screenwriters as well, and they’re fighting back. TikTok is considering AI generated ad avatars. Amazon uses secret intel gathering on its competitors. Spotify as a source for audiobooks is exploding. FTC proposal says ‘no way’ to contract non-compete clauses, which harm authors. In a surprising change, Ingram notified small publishers that the company wou ..read more

  Ever taken a punch to the face? I have.* Sometimes getting feedback on a manuscript feels very similar. I’m shocked, my head is spinning, I’m a bit bruised, and I want a nap. And maybe some dark chocolate, or a hug. Taking criticism is hard, even when you ask for it. I think the best writers ask for it. (Thanks to Ray Rhamey, we’ve all read what happens when the best writers stop asking for it.) I’m lucky to have found critique partners I can trust to be honest with me. They’ve saved me from some serious mistakes and helped me sharpen my skills. Early in my career, I scrapped my (rushe ..read more

My relationship with crows is best described as complicated-but-definitely-trending-positive. Last Thursday evening however, I was startled by a sudden, fervent, 5-alarm cacawphony. No matter, I told myself. They mean me no harm. They are not coming for me. They are simply playing games, noisy games like Taunt the Neighborhood Bald Eagle. Or, Taunt the Neighborhood Raccoon. Or, Taunt the Red-headed Postal Carrier, the One with Kind Eyes and Dog Treats. But after ten minutes, the cawing had only grown louder, and when I tiptoed to the window to peek at the mayhem, I was amazed: close to one hu ..read more

Writing fiction requires imagination. So does reading fiction. But what kinds? Are both writing and reading imagination the same? Let’s take a closer look. Daydreaming is passive imagination, thought clouds drifting by. Solving math problems uses cognitive imagination. Designing a table to be constructed in your garage woodshop, or mentally planning the route you will drive to a football game, involves practical imagination. Picking your wedding colors engages esthetic imagination. Rearranging your closet to put your clothes into a new pattern is the use of active imagination. Writing fiction ..read more

No prophet is welcome in his own country according to the New Testament. It isn’t so much what they foresee. It’s that their predictions are based on their ability to observe the foibles, biases, and bad practices of the present. Prophets foresee the future much like climate scientists who analyze past and present in order to predict the death of coral reefs and the steady rise of sea levels. We don’t want to hear anything critical about ourselves, and we don’t like inscrutable killjoys, prophets who warn us to temper our appetites, to nurture good habits, and to think of others. One of my fa ..read more