Have you ever read a story where the character seems too good to be true?  I actually can’t recall too many off the top of my head.  I suspect it’s because within a chapter or so of reading the character I’ve dismissed the story as crap and moved on.  Honestly, I can only think of one character who was without faults (as we mortals know them anyway) and the book he appears in is FULL of flawed characters. Anyway, preaching aside, my point is, for a character in a story to actually be interesting (in my opinion, at least) the character or characters must have some flaws.  “But why?” you might ask.  “Why MUST a character have flaws to be interesting?”  […]

So, last week I set myself a SMART challenge that was both smaller than some I’ve done before and, at the same time, bigger.  What the…?  Does he have any idea how stupid that sounds? Of course I do.  Self-awareness is one of those things that defines sentience which, I’d like to believe I am… sentient, that is… sort of.  But bare with me a moment while I “try” to explain my opening statement. The goals I set were smaller than usual in that I was only setting specific, SMART, goals for a 7-day period of time.  The writing tasks were finite in nature to suit the timeframe.  With me so far?  Good, cause I’d really hate to lose you at […]

How does one exactly balance the rigors of daily life and writing?  I think that question has as many answers as there are writers out there.  I know, we’ve heard from Sean that he needed to step away for a while when change in job was an issue.  I’ve seen evidence that when the stress and uncertainty of job-change is in the air, it affects others the same way.  Not having changed jobs in a while, I’m not exactly sure what it would do to me and my writing. But there are other things to consider too:  family, friends, hobbies, daily chores.  They all need time.  For me personally, I’ve got commitments with church, I’m taking an evening class, my […]

My competitive nature has never been more apparent to me than it is right now.  Bare with me a moment while I explain. I’ve been writing and editing AND plotting the past while.  I’ve been creating and sending out submission packages.  I even managed the time (with the rest of the SWN crew) to do an interview for The Writing Show (blatant plug).  But I haven’t REALLY been generating new story ideas.  Nope, I’ve been more focused on what’s in front of me than what’s ahead. I feel a bit stuck with the same old stuff, actually. As usual, I’ve been talking with Aaron who seems to have new ideas every day.  Sometimes every hour.  He bounces them off me, they […]