Bryan Young's Blog, page 9

2015 - A year of writing in review

A lot happened in 2015 in my writing career and I produced a LOT of work.

By the numbers:

I published 1 novelI published 1 original short story collectionI wrote 2.8 new novelsI wrote and published more than 12 short storiesI wrote more than 100 pieces for magazines, print publications and websitesAltogether, I wrote 498,161 words in 2015, which averages to 1368 words written per dayBy December 31, I'd written for 181 consecutive daysThese are not for comparison with other writers. I...

Writer's Rules Revisited #16

I haven't done one of these since March of 2013, and since people keep telling me how useful they've found these over the years, I figure I might as well finish what I started. 

For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago (way back in August of 2011) I posted a list of rules and guidelines I'd been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing he...

Star Wars and Writing and stuff...

My regular blogging schedule has been a bit erratic lately. Surely you all know that there was a new Star Wars movie released. That probably has a lot to do with it. I've been distracted by that, and then got hit with a sinus infection, which made things even more challenging for my schedule. But I'm getting back in the swing and the first thing I thought I'd do would be to post an update.

My writing of prose has slowed down considerably. I'm down to only a few hundred words a day, which is lo...

Imagining a Better Tomorrow

Ursula K. LeGuin wrote some of my favorite fantasy books, even though I only managed to read them this year. The EarthSea books were absolutely incredible and, although I was late to the game, I became a large fan of Ms. LeGuin's.

And then I saw this video of hers:



She's accepting National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters here, but the speech is incredible and it called upon us as writers to imagine worlds with alternatives to capitalism. We live i...

You've finished your novel, now what?

I'm positive there will be a hundred pieces written about what you should do with your manuscript when you're finished with it, but none of them will have been written by me. And so this modest entry to my writing space is my suggestion on what I think you should do with you novel now that you're done with it, but it's your novel. You don't have to listen to me.

The first thing I'm going to tell you might seem difficult and as though it will take a long time, but it's absolutely going to help...

We need to read more...

I've made a conscious effort to read more in 2015. I was writing so much in 2014 that I let my reading slip behind. I didn't quite realize how much reading less would affect me, but I knew it was having some effect.

In 2015, I committed to read at least one book or graphic novel for every week of the year, hoping I'd be able to fit that into my schedule easily enough. I've read far more than that by now, but I have to say that I'm having the most productive year of writing in my life, which is...

An Oasis of Time and Space

I find the most important tool in getting my writing done is prioritizing the time and space to write. People ask me where I find the time to write, and I tell them, "I get up early and write."

To me, it's seems that simple, but I realize it might not be for everyone.

John Cleese, the writer and comedian, called it his "oasis of time and space," and I think everyone can find a little bit of that. Some people find those oases and fill them with working out (which I need to do more of) or with pl...

Setting Writing Goals and LOTS of News...

It's been a huge week for me, and it's only going to get bigger from here.

Before we get to that, though, I want to talk about writing and keeping up momentum. As many of you, perhaps even most of you, know, November has been designated as "National Novel Writing Month." NaNoWriMo for short. For many, this is the kick in the pants they need to throw down the 50,000 words it might take to give them their first novel.

The process is simple. You go to their website, sign up, and start tracking you...

An Update!

I'm sorry I dropped off the face of the planet last week.

I kinda got pneumonia and had to go to the hospital and stuff. You can listen to me explain that whole ordeal on the latest episode of Full of Sith if you're so inclined. Even though I spent 90% of my time in a fevered delirium, I still managed to sneak in a couple of hundred words a day, thereby keeping up my streak of writing every day.

Granted, I may have had to rewrite a little bit of that mess, and it did set me behind schedule cons...

A Look at the Trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the trailer for the new Star Wars film came out.

I wanted to talk about the trailer in the context of storytelling. The trailer says so much without saying anything at all really, it implies things and lets you infer so much information that you wonder if you're even coming to the right conclusions.

This is one of the things the Star Wars films does the best in the first place, but perhaps none was better than Star Wars: Episode IV - A New H...