The process of Boiling Down The Bones (aka Revision) is the hardest part of the writing process to teach, but I'll give a shot. I'm starting with one massive assumption – you understand that nobody writes a publishable first draft and everyone's work can be made better with revision. For the record, my novels usually go […]
People sometimes ask me to quantify how much time I spend in the different stages of the writing process. That’s a tough question. If you held my favorite teddy bear hostage and forced me to answer, I’d say roughly 5% goes to Pondering and Mucking Around, 15% is spent Scribbling, 70% is Boiling Down […]
We suck at teaching writing. We use beige, dust-covered words and arrange them in well-balanced, useless diagrams like this…. … and then we roll our eyes when students say they hate writing. We are idiots. It’s time to rename the stages of writing. We’re writers, right? (Try saying that fast three times!) It’s our job […]
Banned Books Week kicks off today which makes this a great time to discuss writing about sensitive topics. Should you think about the possibility that your book will be censored? What are your responsibilities to your readers? When I was writing SPEAK, I never thought that it might be censored. The possibility that the book […]
Sorry for the delay in this post, you guys. Some random, flatulant demon farted near an underground cable yesterday and temporarily removed my website from the Internet. A crew of dedicated technicians expelled the demon and worked feverishly through the night and so here we are. Thanks for your patience. (If you ever see a demon in the […]