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Note from Belem – Order from chaos

After some shaming from Rupert, who said “instead of dicking about with these silly little smut sketches, you should write a fantasy novel”, I decided to see what I had in my sketches project. The answer is: a lot, and not a lot. I reviewed the sketch collection, to see what basis there is a for a novel. On some fronts I was surprised. I do have a sort of plot arc, and there are […]

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Writing and politics

We are deep into what I believe is the most important electoral cycle of my lifetime. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are engaged, fired up and motivated in all sorts of ways. I am seeing this on my Twitter account, where people who self-identify as writers are posting tangentially or directly political tweets. This, of course, leads to a spectrum of reactions from “nah, not my scene” to “HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT ABOUT MY

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Revising your book after publication

I was involved in a brief discussion this morning about whether one should revise an ebook after publication. My answer was:  Of course. One of the supposed massive advantages of a digital publication medium is that you can update ebooks. At least one ebook that I purchased some time ago, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur by Guy Kawasaki, was updated a few years after its initial publication. I was notified by Amazon that the book had been

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Rupert’s Rules of Writing – #4

#4. At some point, you will have to let go. Do it with joy and forward movement.  Leonardo da Vinci is supposed to have observed that works of art are never completed. Instead, they are abandoned. At some point every creative artist says “that is enough”, and they move on to the next work. They seldom return to an already completed work, and many incomplete works remain incomplete for a number of good reasons. You

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Rupert’s Rules of Writing – #3

#3. The only way to assess whether a story is ready for publication is to create a publication version, wait, and then read it.  I have discovered that the only way to assess the completeness, consistency, quality etc. of a story, a novella or a book is to actually package it up and create a publication of it. Then you wait. For enough time to disengage from it. Then you read it. You will get

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