The Writing Life

This, from Merrit Tierce, has been making the rounds: I Published My Debut Novel to Critical Acclaim—and Then I Promptly Went Broke My first thought: yeah, well, welcome to the club. Ha ha, just kidding: I kept my day job. I kept my day job – I keep my day job – even though some […]

I’ve cancelled the rest of my appearances for this year, which I know surprised and worried a lot of people, but frankly, there is a lot of writerly-shit on deck right now, and I keep falling further and further behind. You have to know when to cut off promo and shift into writing hermit mode,

Being a writer is a weird thing. I guess any time you live publicly, it’s like living in an abusive relationship. You’ve got a bunch of people publicly and simultaneously declaring that you are the most talented and humane person in the world… and also the biggest jerk hack that ever lived. This is one

At various conventions, I’ve had new(er) authors come up to my signing table or come up to me after a panel and basically just give me their cards. I’ve also had authors hand me their books or, in the case of a couple of very smart new authors, ask if they can swap one of

Over the last month or so I’ve become one of those writers with a Secret Project (I know – I hate those people too) on top of The Broken Heavens manuscript due at the end of the year, on top of The Stars Are Legion copyedits due the end of the month, on top of

Writing three books last year was an exercise in grind. While there may be many people happy to write 4, 6, 12 books a year, I am not one of them. A big part of my process is the research involved in worldbuilding and the deft untangling of what makes character relationships compelling, and that

Delilah Dawson asked folks on Twitter how they deal with professional jealousy. Scalzi’s response was, more or less “I am a leaf on the wind,” and while being a leaf on the wind is admirable, I admit I don’t know very many folks who manage to reach that level of zen. Lilith Saintcrow, having seen

Despite all of my real talk about publishing here, I can get caught up in The Publishing Dream just as easily as anyone. I still see my peers getting the six and seven figure advances. I see breakout books happen to folks who were previously midlist. I still get excited when one of my books