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I follow many, many blogs on writing and other subjects (including pictures of cats - that's 85% of the internet, isn't it?), and Chuck Wendig's blog  terribleminds  had a really interesting post a while back.  Basically, it's a set of questions to see how you're doing in the realm of writing.  I thought, what better place to answer them than on my blog?  Plus, it saves me from coming up with a new blog post.  Huzzah! a) What’s your greatest strength / skill in terms of writing/storytelling? World-building.  I tend to spend a lot of time figuring out what the world looks like, and why things happen the way they do.  I also do a reasonably good job figuring out pacing and timing for my stories. b) What’s your greatest weakness in writing/storytelling? What gives you the most trouble? Exposition.  I tend to get into the Department of Backstory when trying to explain some important piece of information to the reader, and just end up with someone telling a story

There appear to be two schools of thought (at least) regarding how much preparation should go into writing fiction.  One is the outline - giving yourself a framework in which to write, and knowing what the ending will be before you write a single word of the beginning.  This requires more up-front effort, but can make it easier when fleshing out the outline by going from point to point.  The more detailed the outline, the more information you know ahead of time that will inform your writing. Pantsing, on the other hand, is writing by the seat of your pants - thus the name.  You don't know what the ending will be before you start writing, and it's possible you don't know what the beginning will be, either.  You start with a vague idea of what you'd like to write, maybe a couple of character sketches, and you just start writing and see what happens.  You may have a a few plot points that you know you want to work in somehow, but you don't know where or how just yet.

For the last few years, I've attempted to do  NaNoWriMo , which basically means I've driven myself crazy trying to write 50,000 words in 30 days.  I've "won" three times so far, so I've decided to up the ante and try to tackle Camp NaNoWriMo this year. For those of you who've never encountered this, NaNoWriMo happens every November.  A large community builds up around the NaNoWriMo website, and in individual writing groups as everyone tries to encourage each other to make their word counts for the day and win.  The years I've won have been years in which I had a good group of people also attempting NaNo, and set times to meet with them to write.  That last part was critical, as it gave us a chance to bounce ideas off of each other and talk our way through sticking points.  While writing is, in general, a solitary activity, it can certainly benefit from having other people around who are also engaging in the same activity. Camp NaNoWriMo is essenti

My apologies for going radio silent on you last week.  After returning from the land of ice and snow (aka Minnesota), I couldn't quite get my feet under me again.  The experience of being surrounded by family again did, however, give me a few ideas that I needed to let sit for a little while before I could express them. My older brother and his family (wife and eleven-year-old daughter) drove from Baltimore to Minnesota for the funeral.  I hadn't realized it at the time, but his wife and daughter had never met this side of the family before, and so there was a lot of introductions to be made.  As with most family gatherings, there were lots of stories to be told, and my sister-in-law and niece were fascinated by them, as they'd never heard them before.  I found out later that my older brother doesn't talk much about his family life, so they don't hear many tales from the past from him. What was interesting to me was what kinds of stories everyone told.  Everyone