Just for fun, I thought I’d post a scene that I’ve been working on. This is from early in the novel, so while it contains important plot points, it’s not much of a spoiler. It takes place aboard the Colonial Union Ship William S. Halliday, which is currently docked with the Deep Space Telescopic Array […]
It does not take the most incisive literary analysis to say that murder mysteries are about death. Someone turns an alive person into a dead one, other people react to that, and a detective (sometimes as the representative of larger society) examines the death in an effort to learn how and why. There is an […]
Looking back on my last few weeks of blog posts, one could be forgiven for thinking that I’ve spent more time writing about writing than actually writing! So, maybe a little update is in order. I have three primary projects right now, and have made some progress on all of them. First, I’m rewriting a […]
(Update: I’ve posted more on this subject here) In my professional life, I deal with metrics on a regular basis. Computer and network security in particular is (in my opinion) struggling with the transition from a qualitative to quantitative field. And hey, at heart I’m a quant: I find it easier to improve aspects of […]
How appropriate that I have a crick in my neck! 2010 is the year I got serious about writing: No more fiddling around writing (just) for my friends, no more getting one rejection and sulking for months. All together, I figure I wrote about 50,000 words of fiction this year. I didn’t sell a damn thing, but […]
In a sense, I’ve been writing for a long time. I started writing little stories for myself in grade school (mostly inspired by television), and by the time I got to high school I was writing short stories to pass around to my friends. I even wrote a few one-act plays that were performed. In […]
The always-fascinating Jim Macdonald wrote a post some years back on the Absolute Write forums (you’re a member, right?) on the subject of becoming an instant expert in a subject.* There’s nothing hugely ground-breaking here, and yet… nobody ever really bothers to spell out this process, do they? To summarize (though you should read his post): […]
Spent part of the evening talking over my short story The Body and the Bomb with Marko. This is an Inspector Crandall mystery, one I’ve several I’ve written, in which I had experimented with having a co-investigator, local Constable Nouri. One of his comments sort of threw me for a loop: I don’t really need […]
Well, NaNoWriMo is proceeding apace. The story is outlined in Scrivener, with 25 scenes planned out and named. That means I’ll need to average about 2,000 words per scene in order to hit the 50k total. So far, I’m averaging 1k per scene. This suggests that I need either another subplot or another fairly major […]
Having tentatively decided to do this YA novel for NaNoWriMo (I’m registered as jpmurphy, by the way if you’re looking for writing buddies) I decided that I should firm up a bit of the setting. Actual writing is not allowed until November 1st, but outlining is, and research definitely is. So I am doing both. […]
John P. Murphy 