Authors Electric

  Okay, so, first off, the link if you're interested in learning more:  https://www.bookcritics.org/emerging-critics/fellowship/ Secondly, to my second point, why is it important to be a good reader and read good books? Of course, you already guessed the answer, because it makes you a better author. When I do work as an editor, I see less expert writing very often, and, after decades as a college writing professor, I had already had a lot of experience with that. When writing is not at its peak, there can be a lot of reasons for it. And, unbeknownst to you, I had just written a long-winded explanation about that. And then, following my own advice, I read it over, and decided less is more; screw the lecture. So, to be a better writer on your own, read better books, and then study them, and then ask yourself, "What makes this writing so good?" That's the meat of what I want to convey here. Now to stop blathering away, and give you one small example of what I mean. One o...

I was invited to be a speaker on a few panels last weekend at the California Creative Writing Conference , one of which was on world-building. I'm old. I admit it. And back-in-the-day I don’t remember us calling it world-building. Part of that is, I think, because all authors of all stories world-build to a certain extent. For me, the world begins within the character. And, crazy as it may sound, I think of that when I look around me, right now, at my little desk in the corner of my bedroom. And there is the Brownie doll my brother gave me for Christmas when I was six. And there is my movie poster from  The Darjeeling Limited.  And there is my orange cherub lamp, on my wooden desk with the pipe legs, and I sit in a wide-backed wicker chair like a minor Bond villain. It is my world. It exudes from me, which sounds slightly gross, I know, but it does. I have moved house a fair amount of times in my life, and, once in a new place, tend to shake the whole thing up at l...