When last we talked about my writing, I’d finished the draft of Book 2 and was trying not to obsess about it. I wanted to take a little break from Sam Kane and write something else before diving into the editing / revision process. Then some shit happened. Kinda derailed my writing plans. I...
The End. I know, I know, you’re not supposed to start with those words. But in this case, it’s appropriate. You see, over the weekend, I finished draft 1 of Sam Kane, Book 2. As you can see from the screen shot, I needed more words than I had planned on to tell the...
Well, I took a break. Sort of. Closing in on the end of the Cold as Ice manuscript, two things occurred to me; 1) there was no way in hell I could pull it together under 95,000 words and 2) my original plan for the end wasn’t going to work. This caused me to...
The weekend was good to me. 3400 words one day, 4300 the next. Not too shabby. When I started writing Cold as Ice, the story flowed really well. I wrote the first part fairly quickly before my mind, racing ahead, forced me to skip a pivotal scene so I could get the second chunk...
I was sitting at writers group a couple months back, listening while someone was giving a critique to someone else, when the gentleman to my left leaned over and asked, “Do you write everyday?” “Yes,” I said, explaining my lunch time ritual of taking the laptop off and putting down as many words as...
So. I decided to do these journals by year and day rather than just starting the numbering over or continuing it on. The Agent First up – news that I broke on Twitter – I have an agent now. After a slew of rejections, some form, some not, Mr. Bob Mecoy called to say...
So. The holidays have brought with them a whole new kind of stress and distraction. My carefully crafted plans for writing have fallen apart under the barrage of demands on my time. Whenever I sit down to write, I find myself having to refresh myself on where I was, where I left off and...
I think the realization or epiphany I had regarding humor in fiction has changed everything. Specifically, I’m talking about humor in my own writing. I used to try very hard to write straight, no humor, very serious (WHY SO SERIOUS?!) all the time. When you do that, it comes off as stiff. At least...
Back in Writing Journal 241, I talked about a lack of focus. Mari Adkins linked me to an article on How to Finish What You Start that got me thinking. So, this weekend I sat down and decided to get organized, figure out what projects I have started and which ones I should focus...
Where I write When I decided to rewrite my novel, Into the Fire, I also decided that I was leaving time on the table that could better be used for other things. Let me explain. An old axiom reads: Never leave money on the table. Essentially, this refers to a negotiation where two parties...
About Patrick:
Patrick Hester is an author, blogger and podcasting dude who lives in Colorado and writes science fiction and fantasy (mostly)...[click to read more]
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