Patricia C. Wrede's Blog, page 11

How long is it?

Well, based on the comments in last week’s Open Mic, it looks like I’m going to be talking about structure and endings for a while. Rowan M got in first, with a request for a post about length—specifically, how you tell how long a story will be

A Halloween Open Mic!

OK, day after Halloween, but it’s still closer to it than it’s been before. Talk among yourselves, ask questions for me to blather on about next week, whatever you like. I’m back from the current round of New Book Publicity and head down in trying to get

Should I do NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month (most commonly known as NaNoWriMo) starts next week. For those unfamiliar with the idea, it started as a straightforward challenge: During the month of November, complete 50,000 words of a novel. In the past 24 years, it’s grown into a huge community of

Writers, business plans, and me

The “Publishing Options” series concluded with the third post I did last week, but I wanted to also talk a bit about some of the other business decisions writers have to make. Specifically, about business plans. The vast majority of writers don’t have even an informal business

Publishing options, Part III-Making the Decision

This is Part 3 of a three-part series on things to consider when deciding how to publish one’s novel. All parts come with a warning: I have next to no personal experience with any form of publishing besides the traditional sort. So read the comments on the

Publishing options, Part II

This is the second part of a three-part series on things to consider when deciding how to publish one’s novel. All parts come with a warning: I have next to no personal experience with any form of publishing besides the traditional sort. So read the comments; there

Publishing options, Part 1

A while back, E. Beck asked for a blog post on various publishing options, pros and cons, and how to decide among them. As always, I have Opinions, but I have to start by pointing out that I have next to no personal experience with any form

September Open Mic

Open mic day! Enjoy.

Trying something different

One of the things I keep repeating over and over is that if what you are doing does not work, you should try doing something different. The problem is that this seems to go against the deepest instincts people have, because the first thing one has to

Crowds vs. Councils

It’s here! The Dark Lord’s Daughter is officially out. I’m excited and anxious and hopeful and lots of other things, which will probably last a couple of weeks until I have some idea how it’s doing. Meantime, I have a blog post to give you. This week