July went by so quickly, I hardly noticed it. Between taking part in the CampNaNoWriMo and my other projects, time flew. This month turned out to be another stepping stone in my writer’s life and in learning more about my process. (more…)
Another month went by, marking the half of the year gone. As usual, I had big plans and ambitious goals, but at the same time I took into consideration the approaching summer. Last year, the heat I’m not used to anymore, thwarted most of my productivity, and I feared this might be the case. Thankfully, June turned out better than expected. (more…)
Some time ago, I read a book series. I think I was already reading a third or fourth book in the series, when I some point I fell the pace slowing down and losing my attention. I checked what page I was at, and I immediately thought: “Oh, it’s page X. It means that there will be the big reveal or the main battle in about ten pages.” That gave me a stumbling pause, killing all my reading pleasure as I realized all the author’s books are exactly the same in their structure, and therefore very predictable regardless of the story that author is telling. In the end, reading the series became boring and lost most of its appeal. (more…)
In the past, I wrote on the importance of researching facts for your stories (if you missed it, you can read my Research Matters: Why I Don’t Read Novels Set in Ireland post), but the process itself can be time-consuming, tedious, and sometimes disheartening, if despite our efforts, we still can’t find the answers we need.
Research can also become a black hole of information, dragging the poor, unsuspecting writer deeper and deeper.
Sounds like a hassle, doesn’t it? Something to be put away until absolutely necessary or done as little as possible. But there’s also a lot of fun in doing research! Here are my three reasons. (more…)
After a little glitch and my website being down for a while, I’m back and fashionably late (at least that’s what I’m telling myself!) with another Writer’s Life report. May turned out a strange month for me. It seemed it just started, and before I realized, most of it was already gone in some unexplainable way. I sure hope that “runaway time” is not going to be a theme for the rest of the year… (more…)
It seems that the shorter the work, the harder it is. Sure, a novel takes longer to write, and requires a good deal of perseverance, but writing a captivating novel is easier than writing a captivating short story as the volume of the former will allow for some mistakes to be excused. Then, writing a short story seems easier than writing a synopsis, and synopsis can be much easier than a pitch in for the query letter. This makes coming up with titles the most challenging part of writing… Well, at least it does for me. (more…)
Back in December I took part in a fun Twitter game which required posting a graphic saying “1 Like = 1 WIP Fact”, and as you can guess, as the likes for the tweet appeared, its author was supposed to post facts about their work-in-progress. I had fun, and got 13 likes, a result I was quite happy with: it gave me enough space to shares some interesting bits of my fantasy novel “By the Pact”, but at the same time it didn’t require me to reveal any plot twists or character secrets.
And today, looking back at it, I thought it would be nice to consolidate all those facts into one post. Since I’m not limited by one tweet anymore, I also elaborated a bit on them. I hope you’ll enjoy. (more…)
I never had the need of learning to drive. Poznań, my hometown in Poland, has an excellent public transport network, and when I moved over to Ireland, I couldn’t afford a car. Also, with the narrow and always jammed streets of Dublin, it seemed better to just search for an apartment near my workplace and walk to work. But moving over to the USA and living at the very edge of the town meant I would finally have start driving.
After waiting for my residency to be sorted out, I got my driver’s permit, and started getting familiar with the “controls” of the new game called “driving,” but it wasn’t until later I found similarities between learning to drive and writing. (more…)
Before I even realized, another month passed by. After not so positive February, I was hoping to catch up with my projects, finish things from my to-do list, and be generally more productive than I was. How did it go? In short: not bad, though definitely not as well as I hoped for. (more…)
Some days ago I came across a meme I’ve seen around several times already. It said “Reading is my superpower. What’s yours?” and it got me thinking about a Superhero Writers group. Classy outfits like old jeans and t-shirt, hipster vintage clothing, or good ol’ pajamas aside, superheroes had to have some sort of superpowers. We all read, so unless we’re going to compete in the amount of books read or reading speed, we need a different kind of superpowers: the writerly one. (more…)