Things have been quiet from Luc Reid here of late, but his Brain Hacks for Writers column will be ramping back up again in the coming year. Luc’s been busy, y’see… and here’s one of the things that has contributed to that busyness:
Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories throws normal people into strange circumstances in stories that can each be read in a few minutes. Cinderella tries to get a grip after her divorce; inventions go horribly wrong; robots rise up against their human masters; a thinking teddy bear is trapped for decades in a toybox; love blossoms in a hotel corridor unmoored from time and space; dinosaurs invent the steam engine; girlfriends blink in and out of existence; and Very Bad Things happen that might be worth it in the end. Writers of the Future winner Luc Reid’s stories bridge science fiction, fantasy, humor, and the unclassifiable.
Ever have one of those dreams where you’re naked in public? Writing fiction is a bit like having a dream, and some writing is embarrassing because it lays us bare.
I’m talking about the kind of writing where you say something to the entire world that you would prefer not to mention to anyone, just because you want to tell a meaningful story. Or you do something in the story that has very little to do with you personally, that means a lot in the piece you’re writing, but that embarrasses you because you don’t want anyone to think it’s autobiographical. Continue reading Writing Naked: How to Profit by Embarrassing Yourself→
It seems that the best thing that ever happened to Harper Lee as a writer was also the worst thing that ever happened to Harper Lee as a writer.
In 1956, Lee received a gift of a year’s wages from friends who told her to “write whatever you please.” Let’s take a moment now for intense jealousy. All done? OK, let’s see what happened next.
In Star Wars: Episode I, Qui-Gon Jinn quips “There’s always a bigger fish.” Admittedly he’s wrong, because since there are not an infinite number of fish in the universe, so one of them has to be the biggest. And I’m probably wrong too when I say “there’s always another way to write it”–but as with the fish thing, it appears that there aren’t many exceptions to that rule. What this means for writers is that it may be possible to find a solution to almost any writing problem we come across. Continue reading There’s Always Another Way To Write It→
Do writers who use critique groups do better than writers who don’t? Do writers need mentors? What differentiates a bad writer from a good writer, and a good writer from a great writer? Does it always take time to develop writing skills, or do some people just have them right off?
Things have been quiet from Luc Reid here of late, but his Brain Hacks for Writers column will be ramping back up again in the coming year. Luc’s been busy, y’see… and here’s one of the things that has contributed to that busyness:
Ever have one of those dreams where you’re naked in public? Writing fiction is a bit like having a dream, and some writing is embarrassing because it lays us bare.