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Tag Archives: jeff vandermeer
5 Holiday Gifts for Speculative Fiction Writers: 2014 Edition
Last year I provided a list of five gifts for the speculative fiction writer on your list. Here’s another installment of that. Sure, you can go for the old standbys: notebooks, pens, a gift certificate so they can buy books, … Continue reading
Writing-Related Link Roundup from November 2014
Writing and day jobs, the things that influence writers, the uncanny power of weird fiction, an interview with David Cronenburg, the power of narrative, Ray Bradbury on creativity, a list of writer’s retreats, Nnedi Okorafor, and how to outline a novel. Continue reading
End of the Year Reading Recommendations
I spent a good chunk of my summer reading through a multi-volume fantasy series for the sake of completeness. The series will remain nameless, because I can’t in good conscience recommend it, but it did impact the amount of other … Continue reading
Posted in you should read this
Tagged andy weir, awards, caren gussoff, carol berg, clinton boomer, daniel abraham, django wexler, elliott kay, gardner dozois, george r.r. martin, harry connolly, jeff vandermeer, jo walton, kameron hurley, linda nagata, m.c.a. hogarth, m.l. brennan, meilan miranda, reading, sofia samatar, women destroy fantasy
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You Should Read This: Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy
I’m timing this post to come out before I’ve finished the last book of the Southern Reach trilogy, ACCEPTANCE, so I haven’t read the entire trilogy yet. But I recommend the overall trilogy based on my utter enthusiasm for the … Continue reading
Today’s Wordcount and Other Notes (8/23/2014)
What I worked on: Sent out a story to an audio market. More on Circus In the Bloodwarm Rain (novel): 574 Prairie Dog Town (working title)(story): 715 words. I’ve rounded the 3k mark on this, and think I’m in the … Continue reading
Posted in Writing
Tagged costa rica, jeff vandermeer, southern reach trilogy, word count
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On Writing: Collaboration And Its Perils
Collaborations can be a lot of fun. My first collaboration came about when Jeff VanderMeer asked if I’d be interested in working together on one and tossed me a 1500 word lump that would end up becoming “The Surgeon’s Tale.” That story remains among one of my favorite pieces of writing, in part because reading back through it evokes the pleasure of batting it back and forth, adding thousand or so word chunks each time, until it ended up in the land of the novelette. I think we managed to make the final result pretty seamless – I have trouble remembering who wrote some bits, although others stand out clearly in my head as Jeff’s or mine, because I remember first reading them or spinning them out.
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Posted in Writing
Tagged ben burgis, bud sparhawk, collaboration, gio clairval, jeff vandermeer, writing F&SF
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Jeff VanderMeer’s Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
I’ve been following Jeff’s posts about this book, which is a very VanderMeerian approach to writing theory, for a while, and so I danced around a bit when this arrived in yesterday’s mail.
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Writing at the Next Level: Getting Inside Your Character’s Head
Once you’ve mastered the basics of getting words on a page and moving characters around through situations, there’s some things that (in my experience) the majority of writers need to focus on. Examples are narrative grammar, paragraphing strategies, trimming excess from sentences, and getting inside a character’s head. Here, I’m going to discuss the last of those.
A lot of this is taken from correspondance with my student Hasnain. He’d asked about story structures, particularly Freitag’s Triangle, and we’d discussed where the triangle occurs in Junot Diaz’s story, Fiesta 1980. In looking at his most recent story, I’d said I thought he needed to get inside his main character’s head more.
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Posted in Writing
Tagged advanced techniques, jeff vandermeer, junot diaz, stephen king, worm within, writing F&SF
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Recent Reading From September
I went through the usual slew of books in September, but I thought I’d mention some of the more notable ones. Links go to the Kindle edition when available, because I do most of my reading on that.
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