Steven R. Southard's Blog, page 25

Your Writing Performance Review for 2021

It’s nearing the end of the year. Assessment time. How have you been doing as a writer of fiction?

I decided to use the Writer’s Performance Review template created by the Book Coach, Jennie Nash. I encourage you to use it, too.

For 2021, I rated myself as a 73 out of 100. My weakest areas were: Goal Orientation, Industry Knowledge, and Strategic Thinking. I only gave myself a 2 rating in each of those.

For each weak area, I need a plan for improvement. Goal Orientation is relativel...

Practice Makes Perfect?

We know practice can help us improve our abilities in various areas. Yet many people believe they can sit down and write a blockbuster novel without any writing practice. Maybe you’re the rare exception who can, but most of us need practice.

Not just any kind of practice. Good practice helps. Bad practice not only wastes your time, but it also hurts by ingraining poor habits. This wonderful blog post by Barbara Baig inspired the one you’re reading now. She calls the two types naïve practi...

Chessiecon 2021 in Review

Had a frantic, but fun-filled weekend at Chessiecon 2021. Chessiecon, named for the sea monster lurking in the Chesapeake Bay, is a science fiction and fantasy convention held each year during the Thanksgiving weekend. For the second year, they made it a virtual conference. And free!

I find it energizing to be in the company of other authors. Their different perspectives on the activity we love always inspires new story ideas. I’ll summarize the seven panels for you.

How to be a paneli...

My Chessiecon 2021 Schedule

You’re invited to join me at a virtual science fiction and fantasy convention this weekend. Give me a second while I find out what they’re charging for admission to this thing…wait…ah, here. No, that can’t be right. It’s free?

I guess so. You can listen all weekend to my inciteful and inspiring ideas for nuttin’. Nada. Zero dollars and zero zero cents. (Well, you’re invited to make a donation.) Here’s the Chessiecon website where you can register to attend.

Anyway, I’ve listed my sche...

When Critique Groups Go Bad

In previous posts, I’ve promoted joining a critique group as a way to improve your writing. I still stand by that, but critique groups—being made up of humans—aren’t perfect. Sometimes you might have to drop out and join a new one.  

Critique groups consist of writers who review and comment on each other’s work. Always voluntary, and usually free or low cost, they meet either in person or online. Through these interactions, you can learn how to improve your writing, and how to give effect...

The 4 Stages of Writing Productivity

If you write, you’d like to write faster. But how? On October 20, I attended a webinar by prolific author Vi Khi Nao, and she said some things that might interest and help you.

Vi Khi Nao

She titled her talk, ‘How to Write Effortlessly and Quickly,’ and I was struck by her four ‘productivity techniques,’ called Inflexible, Exact, Flexible, and Ideal Muse.

When she declared that last one, Ideal Muse, as her favorite, I figured I’d skip to it. Then she said you can’t skip. You must wo...

International Pronouns Day

Oh, English. You’re an interesting language, but you’re burdened with some old baggage. Maybe it’s time you changed.

logo for International Pronouns Day

Today is International Pronouns Day (IPD). A day to recognize your acquaintances might choose different pronouns than you expect, and it’s only polite to use the ones they want.

You might meet a stranger who says, “Hi. I’m Jessica and I go by the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘him.’ Since Jessica told you that, it would be impolite if you said to s...

Link-Chart Your Story

Link charts—I know you’ve seen them. Big, poster-size charts with pictures and words, arrows and colored threads connecting things. Complex, but visually stunning. Could you use one to write your novel?

You’ve seen link charts on shows featuring detectives and others with basement conspiracy theorists. You may have seen two of them on a TV ad for CarGurus. Note: I’m neither endorsing nor disparaging CarGurus.

From what I understand, real-life detectives rarely, if ever, use link charts...

How Readable is Your Story?

If you’d like your fiction to sell well, wouldn’t it be beneficial if readers found your stories easy to read?

Not all writers see it that way. Some authors of the world’s great classic literature made it tough on their readers, but their books still became bestsellers. Obviously, readability alone doesn’t determine great writing.

For the most part, the factors of great writing remain intangible, but you can measure readability. Many word processor software packages calculate the ‘Fles...

Can You Skip the Suffering Part?

Many great writers suffered early in life and during their writing careers. Of these, a good number wrote from a place of suffering, capturing that pain and creating timeless novels.

Did their suffering lead to classic writing? If so, would these authors have written so well if not for their suffering? In other words, is personal suffering necessary to produce great art?

Brian Feinblum explored this topic in a blogpost, and that’s what inspired my post today.

What about those of us ...