NO! You don’t have to–especially if your concept of the start is a little shaky, but you have this superior idea for the middle. Write the middle instead! Write whatever scenes are clearest to you even if they’re supposed to be the last. Do the “drudge work” of connecting them at your regular daily writing session. The point is to get something down before you lose the spark, the desire to create. You can clean the story up later. You can even change it so that it’s nothing like your first draft. But you might not start the work at all if you don’t write something down.

It’s always better to write something than nothing. Give yourself (and the story) a fair chance by writing the most inspirational parts first.

At first I thought it was crazy. But the video really convinced me. I’d heard of people using the phone book as a source of character (or even pen) names, but not the yellow pages for topics. Maybe it will work for you!

Perhaps creating a deadline (and sticking to it!) is what you need to give yourself a creative push. Or perhaps that blank page is giving you the illusion that the sky is the limit, and that’s intimidating. I’ll tell you that there is almost no way that you could write about absolutely anything at all. You will write about:

• something that interests you... A pet. A person. Someone you wish you knew. Someone you wish you were.
• in a place or setting that interests you… You’re not going to write 100,000 words about someplace you care nothing about. Unless you’re getting paid millions of dollars, I wager.
• in a genre that interests you… You already know if you’re writing about John’s pet bunny or a serial killer. You already know you want to write middle grade or crime fiction. So you’re limited in that.
• in a voice that interests you. How do you want to tell this story? Much will be determined by who is telling the story and why.

By realizing the limits that are already set, the story becomes the focus, and it’s easier to write. Now you can see the creativity lies in what your character says, why she says it, what she does, etc. within the constraints that make sense for the story you are trying to tell.

Of course you can throw all this out the window. Writing is an art, after all. But if you set some limits for yourself, the story just might come a little easier.

Happy writing!

“HarperCollins say that Authonomy will be entirely democratic, and allow anyone to participate; either as an author, or as a reader.  They also guarantee that the most popular manuscripts (as voted by the Authonomy community) will be considered for publication.  HarperCollins also anticipates industry professionals looking for new talent to make up a ‘fair chunk’ of the readers.”

I want to be optimistic about this, but honestly it seems like a way to get writers to do HarperCollins’ work–i.e, going through the slushpile–for free. Maybe they look at it as a way for new authors to review each other’s work in order to improve, but do they really believe industry professions will join? I can’t imagine agents and editors signing up to read MORE raw submissions than their own slushpiles offer.

Who knows? You might learn something from Walt Disney’s wienie, too!

Just got some work back from a new copyeditor hired by my publisher. She did a flawless job. She also wrecked my work. Totally wrecked it.

By sanding off every edge, removing every idiom, making each and every fact literally correct, she made it boring and dry and mechanical.

As fiction writers, we are supposed to know the rules, and also when to break them. Editing (for ourselves and others) is an art, too. When we edit our own (or other people’s work), the desire may be to make the copy “clean,” but the goal should be to “first, do no harm.” (Since the phrase “first, do no harm” was never actually in the Hippocratic Oath, I vote we writers and editors take it. At least it will finally belong to something.)

I used to dread going to those little writer’s critique sessions because I expected there would be at least one person who did not get this. That never actually happened, however. In fact, most of us were real newbies who wouldn’t know an elliptical phrase if it tripped us and stole our donuts. I am not sure where I am going with this, but you read this far so I suppose I should be polite and wrap this up. I think the real problem is that when you pay someone to do something they went to school for years to improve, they try really hard to do it well, especially if they like their job and want to keep it. Maybe the weirdest thing about this is that I can’t imagine a human actually changing, “I got a baker’s dozen of donuts and a cup of Joe then hit the streets,” to “I bought exactly 13 donuts and a coffee and left through the door because the window would be silly.” And, actually, that’s an elliptical phrase there, so it would have been changed to, “because leaving through the window would be silly,” since the copyeditor in question apparently copyedited all that human stuff out. Does that mean his copyeditor’s office is hiring grammar robots instead of people? Are they admitting robots into colleges now? And most importantly, I wish I had some donuts to go with this coffee, but I think that elliptical phrase took them. And that’s not a question. Didn’t it seem like I was going to end with another question? Maybe I should. Have. Crap.

“Her Cinderella story once charmed us. Her greedy evil-witch behavior now disgusts us. And her next book will be perceived as the work of that evil witch.”

Oh, for a world where women are more than Cinderellas and witches, but that’s for another day. I disagree with this. I doubt she is losing fans because of this lawsuit–if anything, I think the exposure will gain her more. J.K. Rowlings is not the RIAA. She is loved even by the man she is suing. As they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Talk about something topical, and whether you speak well of it or ill, people will pay you some attention. Maybe Mr. Card knows this, too!

That’s okay–write them down. Getting those bad ideas out of your head and recorded on paper will leave you free to rework them, or to come up with fresh new ideas. Forcing yourself to hold an idea in the back of your mind can restrict your ability to think of new, random ideas which might work better for you. You’ll also have those bad ideas for reference–and they might look better on paper, too.

If I had to sum up the entire game in ten words, I’d probably do it like this: To rise, fight, and die again–we of Azeroth, immortal.

Here’s my homage to Hemingway: For sale: Feet of the Lynx with enchant, never worn.

Now you try. It doesn’t have to be about Warcraft, of course. Choose any topic that inspires you and write your ten word story. Share if you like!