There’s a lot of theoretical advice for writers out there, but not nearly enough written on practical matters. The actual how-to of writing fiction. When I was invited to write a piece for Natasha Lane’s blog, I decided to focus on the practical and wrote about 5 Tactics Novelists Can Use to Rescue Themselves from the […]
writing
This is the other secret…
This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod […]
Milemarker #200 on this blog
Tonight is noteworthy because this is the 200th blog post that I’ve published here on MGHerron.com! A little history will help provide perspective. I registered this domain and launched the website in December 2013, shortly after I settled on a pen name and began to write and publish fiction seriously. That’s almost four years ago […]
This is how you do it…
“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” Neil Gaiman
Fast drafting mindset on Day 1 of NaNoWriMo
Today is day 1 of NaNoWriMo.
Which means thousands and thousands of people are setting out on the crazy journey to write a 50,000 word novel in one month.
That’s 1667 words a day.
Which is awesome. Crazy awesome.
Cycling back with Translocator 3
I’m in a weird place with the current draft of Translocator 3 — right at the end of the first act, just over 20,000 words written so far, and trying to get everything into its proper place for the setup before I move on into the middle of the novel. As a result of a […]
3 things I learned blogging for 30 days in a row
Today marks the 30th day in a row of blogging here on mgherron.com! I’m celebrating this small victory with my favorite cider… *KACHNK* *HHSSSSSSSS* *SLURP* Ahhhh, yeahup. That hits the spot. Blogging every day for a month was a good challenge. Here are a few things I already knew, but which the challenge brought to […]
Writing has nothing to do with how you feel about it
I’m gonna have to go look up the writing book where I first encountered this advice, because it’s escaping me right now, but the wisdom went something like this: The quality of your writing has no correlation to how you feel about it while you’re writing. That’s right, no matter whether you’re happy or sad, […]
Writing is like driving at night in the fog…
“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” ― E.L. Doctorow, Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews
Sometimes writing is thinking
Today was mostly life stuff — groceries, cutting the grass, seeing friends, cooking food. Good food, too. The steak and lemon risotto we made for dinner was absolutely delicious. I did find a little time to write. The first part of that was spent doing distance and speed calculations for the logistical problem I stumbled […]