Since I can remember, one of my favourite parts of going to bed is finally having time to daydream, without feeling obliged to turn my mind back toward work or school or social engagement. I’d imagine scenarios in which my favourite book and TV characters found themselves — or, as…
Well, here I am on the downhill side of the less-intense summer months. July and August are my downest of downtimes, but September and the start of school rev everything up into high gear again. I had plenty of time to chill out this summer after finally finishing a critique-ready…
I’ve accepted that part of what I’m writing is a romance. I mean, I always knew characters would have romantic relations and whatnot, but that doesn’t always make the plot a romance, any more than a death makes it a murder mystery. Anyhow, as I worked on these romance aspects…
(But first order of business these days: EFF NAZIS. Or better yet, NAZIS CAN GO EFF THEMSELVES. I’m not wasting perfectly good swear-words on proud white supremacist garbage scum.) The older I get, the more convinced I am that one of the most valuable high-school experiences for my professional life…
The manuscript I’m working on involves a few places I’ve never seen except on a TV screen — police stations, courtrooms, and jail cells. Until I started these characters’ stories, I tended to set my fiction in places I was familiar with: high school, parks, fantasy lands that bore striking…
Welcome to TWT 247, where we play the best hits of Toxic Writing Thoughts 24/7! The exact way you shouldn’t! Coming up next, we have a few perennial favourites, so throw away your keyboard, embrace self-doubt or overweening arrogance or both (your choice), and, above all, don’t write for the next…
As a Jew, I’m torn when I read debates on whether it’s right to write stories with sympathetic Nazi characters.
When I was a teen, the writing books I picked up admonished me to write longhand and edit from printouts. They pooh-poohed using a computer as not quite the same thing. And for a while, that style of writing worked for me: I wrote first drafts by hand, ran through…
I am pretty full of myself and want people to like and praise me. Sometimes, that means I can empathize with cynicism about writing from a place of privilege, whether I’m writing fiction or essays. I see the argument all the time from white or male or able or straight…
I’ve noticed a weird thing about acting. If I’m a bit nervous before I go onstage, then when I get out there, I’m calm and fine. I’ve prepared for not being able to predict exactly what’s going to happen, and I’ve accepted that each performance has surprise moments. However, if…