GRIT + PEARL is my monthly letter about all the annoying stuff that goes into writing books and being a person who writes books (or other stuff, I don’t know, I’m not your boss). You can sign up here. Here’s January’s letter.
on writing
Writing Spaces
I’ve been listening to Sarah Enni‘s First Draft podcast non-stop since I discovered it via Twitter a few weeks ago. I tweeted at her to let her know. She tweeted back. It was great. Still waiting for her to reach out to interview me, but I know she’s busy and heaven knows I’m busy. Gosh.
Word Counts: Yours, Theirs, and Mine
This past weekend I was at a bar with a few folks from work and the topic of writing and fantasy novels came up. This, to me, is always a perilous moment. Compared to a lot of writers, I’m not altogether that enthusiastic with talking about my writing projects with strangers (you know, aside from having a blog that is url’d with my name, where I literally talk about my writing projects with strangers…). But someone mentioned that I was working on getting published and inevitably someone else asked: “How long is your book?”
Mud Money Days
“I was a terrible child,” Jackson says to me. We’re on a beach–Singing Beach–which is a short walk from a train station called, romantically, Manchester by the Sea. “Very bossy. I used to boss everyone around. My sister was my little minion, until she figured it out and escaped.”
He goes on: “At the beach, I used to make coins out of mud and make the other kids pay with them for things, and I would charge interest since I invented the currency.”
Metaphori-Weekly! – People Are Like Pencils
People Are Like Pencils
People are like pencils; honed and whole at first, with a core of potential words hidden beneath a sheath of laminate, a hard-gloss finish in any and every color. People are like pencils; sharpened to a lethal point in a moment of whirring tumult, a point that might prick blood in the half-thought of haste, a point that cuts across yawns of ambiguous blankness in precise, stringent lines that structure and rectify, cross-out and destroy. People are like pencils; their words might be erased, but not the actual imprints they etch on the surfaces they touch; when their sentences are gone, the ghosts of their sentiments are left behind as pocks and scars and smudges and particles of dust.
April is LGBT Month! #LGBTApril
Laura (of Laura Plus Books) and Cayce (of Fighting Dreamer) are doing this great thing called LGBT Month this April (#LGBTApril), and I’m participating!
I mean, I guess I’m always participating, because every month is LGBT Month for me, but it’s more fun to do these sort of things when people are making cute banners for you, and when you’ve got a tribe bristling with restless inspiration and do-good vibes.
The Importance of Gay Heroes That Don’t Die
There are many tropes. Busty, blonde damsels. Brittle, brunette mistresses. Feisty, red-headed warriors. Alternatively: White-Male-Hero-With-Somnolent-Eyes-Yet-Aerodynamic-Cheek-Bones vs. Anything. Or the ever-plotless vengeance against a villain with no real motivation for villainy save an inscrutable need to inconvenience Our Hero. We know these tropes well. They’re practically family. If one came to your door and asked to come in, you might check for a judicious nod from your mother, but you’d open that door.
Useless Magic
So a while ago I was brainstorming useless magic powers with a friend (this has since turned into a discussion topic between multiple friends of mine, a trend of which is as simultaneously enchanting as it is distressing). I thought I’d make a list of my favorites here, you know, because I’m compulsive and delusional and think this will add value to the internet. Feel free to leave a suggestion or six!
16 Essentials for Succeeding as A Writer in 2014
1. Crippling Self-Doubt Cutely Coupled With Billowing Anxiety
2. Wool Socks (trust me)
Beta Reading 2
Two updates!