I’m a creature of habit and routine, anything outside of my realm of obssessive organisation either has to quickly find a sub-section to house itself within or freeze itself in suspended animation until it catches my eye again. After writing for a few years and after my recent two week writing push, I became aware
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Back up your writing!
Just a quick word on backing up your work. No, I haven’t just had that nightmare scenario where your work has been subsumed into the ether never to be seen again but I thought I would share my super anal back up practises…on second thoughts, I’ll rephrase that. This is how I back up my
Published in ‘The Last Laugh’!
So here’s my first ever publication, in the flesh. Feels good, feels like I’m actually getting somewhere. The best part was seeing my name in the copyright pages, nothing like legal mumbo-jumbo to stir the emotions! Richard from Spike The Cat sent over a copy of ‘The Last Laugh’ anthology a few weeks ago. I
Talking About Rejections
Read an interesting blog post by Heather Trese entitled ‘Should Writers Talk About Their Rejections?‘ after seeing it retweeted by @dirtywhitecandy on Twitter. This caught my interest because I painstakingly detail all my rejections here. I mainly do this for a personal record but intentionally because I’ve never seen any other writer do it. The
My Alterego: Ben Cory Wodehouse
Came across the site I Write Like which compares your own writing with more esteemed writers. I uploaded the first 3 chapters of Railroaded and IWL said I write like Cory Doctorow. I then uploaded the first 3 chapters of my WIP and IWL says I write like P.G.Wodehouse. I’ve never read either of these
Short Story Published!
Holy crap! Hell must have frozen over, eskimo’s must be buying ice AND arabs must be buying sand plus other such impossibilities because one of my short stories is actually getting published. Spikethecat had a competition called ‘The Last Laugh‘ so I submitted my story ‘The Lost Journeyman’. Recently I got an email saying it
Myows – Free Online Copyright Protection
MYOWS is a fairly new site (still in beta at time of writing) where you can upload your original work and manage it’s copyright protection. How does it do that? By uploading a piece of work you are agreeing it is yours and giving it a creation date (the date you uploaded it). You then
Are you ready to publish your novel?
There’s a wave of graphic/information geeks out there who are making seemingly boring data look attractive via the medium of flow-charts, graphs, pie-charts, etc. Information is Beautiful is the best known site featuring loads of ‘Infographics’. Charting The Beatles is a great one charting the lyrics and songs of The Beatles. GraphJam contains loads of
You can lead a writer to research but you can’t make it produce a plot
My initial goal this year was to start writing my second novel on January 1st…well, 3 months down the line I still haven’t actually broken ground on it but I have been researching and note taking and thinking and sketching like a madman. I’m very close to starting, I can feel it. I’m also realising
Is Your Sci-fi Story Original?
I submitted a short story to Strange Horizons, an online speculative fiction magazine, and reading their thorough submission guidelines was an education. They have a great section called ‘Stories We’ve Seen Too Often‘ which details up to 37 plots which they’ve seen too many times. Some of them are blatant no-brainers such as ‘it’s all