I’m often asked what books I enjoy reading. I read a lot of different genres, so it’s not a quick question to answer. Instead, here is a short list of some of my favorite books. Fantasy The Lord of the Rings — J.R.R. Tolkien My introduction to the fantasy genre was The Hobbit, which I still […]
General
Plotting and Pantsing – Part Deux
Last week I talked about Plotting and Pantsing. That post leads to the inevitable question, “What does Mark do?” Well, for starters. I pantsed the pants out of that article. That post actually started with this post, which is in response to a question from a reader. How do I go about planning my stories? I […]
Plotting and Pantsing
There are thousands of articles debating plotting and pantsing. There are hundreds more trying to justify doing both (plantsing?). Dozens of others recommend doing whichever works best for you, the writer. So why write yet another blog post about it? Wait. You don’t know what pantsing is? Okay, if you’re not a writer (or maybe even […]
Writing Is Like Running
I went for a run yesterday morning. Just a short, one-mile run, but it was a beautiful morning and I couldn’t help myself. One of the things I enjoy about running is that it clears my head. I put in my earbuds, crank up the music, and run. At the start of a run, I […]
Festivus!
In honor of Festivus, an airing of grievances: 1. Blog posts with no date – I find this to be one of my biggest pet peeves on the Internet. You Google some topic, read several articles with conflicting information, so you look at the dates to see which is the most recent, and therefore most […]