Nancy E. Shaffer's Blog, page 11
June 14, 2012
Good Reads
So I’m setting myself up on Good Reads, which is proving more difficult than it should be. ‘Cause there are books (1) I own, but read so long ago, I don’t remember if I liked them or not, (2) I think I remember reading, but that was so long ago, I am not sure if [...]
June 11, 2012
Write, write, write
Okay, so I am doing this: 2012 Clarion West Write-a-thon to push myself through the final five chapters of the first draft of my novel. My participant page is here: http://clarionwest.org/writeathon/nan... From http://clarionwest.org/about: Clarion West brings new writers to the field of speculative fiction by providing a venue for a transformative experience in the form [...]
June 10, 2012
Alison Bechdel: a Primer
Yes, she is an actual person. No, she is not an academic. She is a cartoonist. But not a political cartoonist, although her politics come into her art, as they do for many artists. Lately, she’s been writing memoirs, but for nearly thirty years, I’ve known her as the artist and writer of one of [...]
May 17, 2012
Two things on my new story
Thing the first: I have been following a blog series on dealing with matters of faith and religion in fiction, and it’s made me pause to think about how I am handling it in my new story. Most of my characters never talk about religion and don’t seem to have any. I have one devout [...]
May 14, 2012
Story-telling vs. plot
An interesting post on story-telling vs. plot I believe a good story, plotted or plotless, rightly told, is satisfying as such and in itself. But here, with “rightly told,” is my conundrum or mystery Filed under: the writing process
May 3, 2012
The first page: what not to do in an author website
After wading through over a thousand author websites, here’s some stuff I’ve learned: (1) Don’t have a site that takes time to load. Potential visitors might not be that patient. Corollary: get a reliable hosting company. If your page doesn’t load at all, no one can visit it. (2) Don’t have a splash page. You’re [...]
April 2, 2012
Between the lines
One fandom activity I don’t like seeing and don’t enjoy doing is nit-picking plot holes. All fictional works have them, but some people relish the idea of pointing them out and castigating the writers of the fictional work. They relish complaining. Television is especially vulnerable to this because of tight writing schedules and multiple authors. [...]
March 28, 2012
Writing meme
1. Go to page 77 (or 7) of your current ms. 2. Go to line 7 3. Copy down the next 7 lines – sentences or paragraphs – and post them as they’re written. Since it would be too much work to figure out what page is 77 (my chapters are in separate files), I [...]
