The post title is a direct quote of a friend’s 3-year old, who asked her mother the above question when told she was having chicken for dinner. (I like this kid) But it turns out to not just be funny but I think good advice for me when I’m writing science fiction. See, one of […]
A quick update, as I haven’t posted in a while: I’ve been outlining, and (finally) writing, working on that work-in-progress novel. Sure enough, that means that my brain has been feverishly coming up with other awesome ideas that would be a ton of fun to work on. Endnote has been useful for this, as has […]
I’ve gotten a fair bit of feedback from the short stories I’ve put out for critique. On the one hand, I hear flattering things about my writing, which is nice. People seem to appreciate the mystery aspect of the stories. But I hear some of the same criticisms over and over: the characters are not […]
No, I don’t want bad SF. I want good SF — but about economics, the “dismal science.” As part of my side hobby of world-building, I’ve been collecting SF-oriented papers by economics like Paul Krugman and Robin Hanson. Hanson’s page (linked left) is a great starting point. There are some fantastic ideas there. But what […]
Started on Chapter 1 over the weekend. Took a long damn time to put those first words on paper, but once I started writing, I could barely keep up. It’s funny: I’d been struggling for a while with one of the weaker aspects of the plot in the planning stages and never came up with […]
“There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader’s trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded.” — S.S. Van Dine, “Twenty […]
I’m pretty evenly split, in writing, between writing on my laptop and writing in notebooks. This occasionally bothers me: I kind of prefer the notebooks, but I have a bad habit of misplacing them. I have a Wacom tablet, but have found it to be (for these purposes) the worst of both worlds: non-portable and […]
I’ve been pretty quiet here lately — work and life and a nasty summer cold intruded. But I’m still scribbling away in that little black Moleskin of mine and in Scrivener and, mirabile dictu, progress is being made. Most of my worry these days is about prologueing. Survivors as I have it outlined will be […]
I’ve been spending some time and energy getting ready for Viable Paradise. I picked up a number of books by and recommended by the instructors. So far I’ve been very impressed: Steven Gould’s Jumper was fantastic, and Doyle and Macdonald’s Land of Mist and Snow is a fine piece of fiction, too. Scalzi’s recent short […]
I’ve been feeling energized lately about my writing! The outline for the novel is progressing by leaps and bounds, which is a nice feeling. But I have been neglecting my short fiction a bit, and I do need to change that. I admit, the prospect of becoming a better writer in a few months’ time […]
John P. Murphy 