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The Craft of Writing

Walt Disney hooked me on storytelling – at six, I walked out of The Apple Dumpling Gang wishing I could tell stories of my own.  Isaac Asimov turned those daydreams into a mission – at twelve, I read Asimov on Science Fiction and realized I want to be a writer.

Writing is the most pivotal human activity! Broad brush, humans conquered fire a million years ago, tools half a million years ago, articulate speech fifty thousand years ago – but it wasn’t until we could capture our thoughts and pass them on to people far from us in space and time that humanity really started to expand across the planet.

But writing didn’t stop at counting cows and recording lineages – creative writing is the most pivotal kind of writing there is! Humans learn about the world by sharing narratives, not just of what we’ve learned, but of what we might become – so the creation of sustained, realistic, compelling narratives is one of the most important things any human can do.

So, ever since I read Asimov on Science Fiction and realized I could be a writer myself, I’ve been on a mission: to promote creative writing in all its forms, and to help you realize you can be a writer too.

Pictured: The Night of Writing Dangerously.

Posts About Writing

[twenty twenty-four day sixty-three]: all growed up

So! Thinking Ink Press has been around for aaaalmost a decade now, and we seem to be getting some of our proverbial shit together. Presented as a case in point:…

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[twenty twenty-four day fifty-eight]: the seven-part story test

So I’ve developed a new tool for story analysis that my co-editor on The Neurodiversiverse, Liza Olmsted, called “your seven-part story test,” and it fits in one long sentence: “Who…

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[twenty twenty-four day fifty-three]: you can’t predict edits

So I’m done with the bulk of my first-round edits for The Neurodiversiverse, and I can report that you can’t predict how long an edit letter is going to take.…

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[twenty twenty-four day thirty-seven]: editors have superpowers …

Editors have superpowers, but you can’t save everybody. One of Ayn Rand’s most useful distinctions for writers is between abstractions and the concretes that realize them. She’s obviously not the…

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[twenty twenty-four day thirty]: the questions i now ask

As a writer, it’s important to have humility – no matter how enthusiastic you are about your work, there’s no guarantee that it will land the way that you want…

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[twenty twenty-four day twenty-eight]: yeah there were a few

We got a LOT of submissions for the Neurodiversiverse. Many were actually on topic! Some, however, despite being well written, were not. And we really want this anthology to follow…

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[twenty-twenty four day sixteen]: blog early, blog often

I’m a night owl – I’d say “extreme night owl”, but my wife used to go to bed shortly before I woke up – and get some of my best…

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[twenty twenty four day three]: digging in to the neurodiversiverse

The Neurodiversiverse submission window has finally closed, Liza and I have triaged the art and assigned the stories, and I’m now digging into my first chunk of the slush pile.…

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[twenty twenty-four day two]: writer’s block sucks

Now, it’s not true that I have writer’s block: I wrote +600 words on a new story, “Plains of Deathless Ice”, a sequel to my recently-submitted story “Shadows of Titanium…

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Blog This

In ATL for the Conference on Robot Learning, very tired after a long day, please enjoy this picture of a Page One from Cafe Intermezzo. Actually, today was a really…

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