Dan Wells's Blog, page 25

Using the Real World

When I first wrote I Am Not a Serial Killer, I set it in the imaginary town of Clayton, in the county of Clayton, somewhere in the American midwest–far enough north to be cold and snowy, with enough forest for my narrative needs while still being sufficiently barren for my tonal needs. It is not a real place, and was never intended to be. Then, in Mr. Monster, I wrote a conversation between various kidnapping victims and realized that the first question they'd ask is "where are we?" I wanted ...

The Art of Making Art

I'm a big fan of musical theater–not every musical ever made, of course, but the art form in general. I find it to be a really interesting, often powerful way to present a story or idea. My tastes are fairly snobbish, though, and I find myself repeatedly drawn to the musicals that focus on story and character and ideas, rather than the big spectacles my friend used to call "Tired Businessman" shows–stuff like Phantom of the Opera or The Little Mermaid that exists primarily to show off...

The Writing Excuses Wonder-Signing

The awesome folks at Dragons and Fairy Tales, a great indie bookstore in Eagle Mountain, Utah, has invited the entire Writing Excuses team for a joint signing/live podcast/launch party, and it is going to be epic. By which I mean that we will gather brave companions, journey to hell, lose our mentor, and achieve apotheosis. Attendees will learn something valuable about life and/or themselves, and may or may not have a chance to drink a Threshold Elixir.

This event is going to be amazing, and y...

A day in the life

This is a very late blog post today, but I have a good reason: I'm really busy. And none of what I'm busy with is writing, which is the sad part and the unfortunate truth of being an author. Let me give you a quick rundown of my day.

1. I woke up with 17 new emails to answer, and that's just the overnight stuff; new emails trickle in all throughout the day, and I take a break every couple of hours to answer them. I don't always answer my emailsright off the bat, though, so don't feel sad if I ...

Working with a Writing Group

The trick to working with a writing group is interpreting it–you have to know what people really mean, and you have to know how that translates into actual changes you should or should not make to your story. Let's consider, for example, that your writing group is similar to mine: you meet once a week, you read each one chapter from each person, and you give comments. We actually read our chapter submissions beforehand, so we're ready to go when we get there, but I know some other groups do i...

Arg!

I just wrote a huge post on writing groups, which WordPress didn't upload and refused to save, so it's completely gone. I'll keep looking, but the odds of me retyping the whole thing are low.

Accountability in Writing

…by which I really mean accountability in goal-setting. I suppose it's possible to talk about other ways in which an artist can be accountable (to his audience, to his family, to his ideals), and that actually sounds like a pretty interesting topic, but it's not the one I want to talk about right now.

I'm talking about accountability as a writing tactic–as a way of making yourself accountable for a certain amount of work. I've been struggling with my current manuscript of late, not because...

Making Use of Goodreads

I'm a big fan of Goodreads, the social networking website that focuses on books: what you're reading, what you've read, reviews and recommendations, etc. I even have a fair number of books marked and rated on my virtual bookshelf, thanks to a friendly competition several years ago with Steve Diamond when we raced each other to post as many book ratings as possible; I won, but he's read (and rated) many more books than I have in the time since.

And that, dear reader, is the issue at hand: it...

Who wants an advance copy of "I Don't Want to Kill You"?

Pretty much as soon as I said I wasn't going to ComicCon, one of my very favorite toy companies announced that they would be selling a totally awesome thing in their booth: a 14″ Dr. Manhattan figure from Watchmen, one of the best graphic novels of all time. Actually, forget the "graphic" stipulation; Watchmen is one of the greatest novels of all time, period. If you haven't read it, I recommend that you do: it's a brilliant deconstruction of the superhero genre, plus just a plain old...

Value Decisions

I've written a lot of training manuals in my day, back when I was a corporate writer, and as onerous as it may have been I did learn several valuable lessons about self-employment. "You can't run a business in your spare time" was a great one, saying that if you're serious about something (say, for example, writing) you can't just wait for time to magically appear, you have to schedule it and treat it like a job.

The thing I want to talk about today is related to that, but a little more...