Steven R. Southard's Blog, page 61
July 19, 2015
Starting With Pen or Keyboard?
Do you write your fiction stories longhand before typing them? I do, and I’m not alone. There are several great blog posts touting the benefits of the pen, by Lee Rourke, Patrick E. McLean, Melanie Pinola, Chris Gayomali, and Julianne MacLean.
Why do we pen-wielders do it? Why do we eschew the fantastic technology of the modern era, designed specifically to make writing easier, and choose instead the old-fashioned, obsolete, and outmoded pen and paper?
Are we Luddites? Are we afraid of, and a...
July 13, 2015
Upcoming Anthology – Hides the Dark Tower
My short story, “Ancient Spin,” will appear in the anthology Hides the Dark Tower, scheduled to appear in October. It’s a new publisher, Pole-to-Pole Publishing, and I think this is their first anthology.
The anthology’s editors, Kelly A. Harmon and Vonnie Winslow Crist, have been great to work with. They’ve selected a stunning piece of artwork for the cover, don’t you think?
The anthology features stories involving towers. There’s just something about towers. They represent man’s attempt to...
July 12, 2015
Writing and the Black Swan
My question is, once you understand how the Black Swan relates to writing fiction, will you be so dejected that you’ll abandon any idea of becoming an author?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable and it was published in 2007. A statistician, the author was trying to get readers to think about low-probability events and our estimation of their risk.
He defined a black swan event as having three properties: (1) it is very rare, to the point of being al...
July 5, 2015
When Good Authors Turn Bad
Arrogance is today’s topic. It seems to me that authors generally start out their career with a tentative and uncertain attitude, but sometimes become more conceited with time. Is this a bad thing? If so, is it inevitable?
No, I’m not naming names. If you follow any author blogs, you may have seen the pattern, and can think of examples yourself. You read an author’s early fiction books, or read their blogs or essays, and they seem unsure, qualifying their statements, admitting they might be w...
June 28, 2015
After the Writer’s Conference
You returned home energized after attending a writer’s conference and you know that feeling will fade, but you wish it wouldn’t. Are there any techniques for maintaining your enthusiasm level?
Of course there are, and you happened onto the very blog post that reveals them.
Let’s backtrack. After months of laboring in solitude, coming up with ideas all by yourself, and typing away at manuscripts alone, you go to a writer’s conference.
While there, you attend panels and hear published authors d...
June 14, 2015
I’ll Never Write As Well As They Do
It’s easy for your favorite authors to intimidate you. When you grow up enjoying reading, and when you study fiction by the world’s best writers in school, it’s natural to put them on a pedestal. They are geniuses, titans, specially gifted demigods with an ability beyond your understanding.
At some point, you might be tempted to try writing fiction yourself. Immediately you reject the notion out of hand. In your mind, you compare yourself to those great authors and dismiss the idea of creatin...
June 7, 2015
Shifting the Narrative Arc
That adage about a picture being worth a thousand words really resonates with me. I like pictures and diagrams. It would be great to capture the structure of a story plot with a picture, wouldn’t it?
Luckily, I don’t have to invent one. That’s been done. And redone and redone. Search the web for “plot arcs” and you’ll see many, many ways to depict story plots. I even offered my own picture here.
Today I’ll pick a few representative plot arcs and discuss how they’ve changed through time. First...
May 31, 2015
Pictures from BALTICON
During my book launch at BALTICON, friend and writer Kelly Harmon took some pictures of Steven R. Southard, my alter ego.
At the book launch of “Ripper’s Ring,” I described the story, passed around my 3D-printed version of the Ring of Gyges, and read an excerpt from the story.
It was the first time I had conducted a book launch at a con, and I learned some things about how to do it better next time.
My thanks to Kelly Harmon for taking the pictures. It’s much appreciated by—
Poseidon’s Scribe...
May 25, 2015
What a Great Time at BALTICON!
Although I’ve attended the major science fiction and fantasy convention in Baltimore for many years, this year marked the first time I spoke as a participant. It’s been a wonderful experience!
First, I spoke on a panel called “Being Out in Fandom.” It was about the issues faced by the LGBTQ community as fans at cons. My thanks to fellow panelists Stephanie “Flashcat” Burke and Hugh J. O’Donnell, and to moderator Jennifer R. Povey for helping me through that unfamiliar territory. I think I lea...
May 19, 2015
Join Me at BALTICON this Weekend
All right, Poseidon’s Scribe fans, here’s an opportunity for you. I’ll be speaking, and generally causing trouble, at BALTICON this weekend. BALTICON is the major science fiction and fantasy convention near Baltimore, Maryland.
Here’s my schedule (subject to change):
Date Time Topic Friday 10:00 PM Being Out in Fandom Saturday 10:00 AM Engineers Can’t Write? Some Known Counter-Examples Saturday 1:00 PM Do You Want Pulp with That? Sunday 11:00 AM Readings Sunday 4:00 PM Autograph...
