Novelettes range in length from 7,500 to 17,000 words. Some readers and publishers insist that novelettes represent a niche market only and that they often have trivial themes, but that isn’t necessarily true. Nor is it accurate that a novelette is just a novella squeezed down or a short story expanded beyond regular boundaries. I’ve…
A number of fiction critics have pointed out the sorry endings to many of Stephen King’s novels. They admit these novels were exciting, interesting, intriguing, and mysterious—until the end. Some complain that these endings don’t ring true—that they’re unimaginative, outlandish, unlikely—even irritating. Perhaps this occurs because King is a pantser, and when he reaches the…
When I wrote corporate technical and user manuals, I never found myself staring at a blank page, waiting for inspiration. I wasn’t concerned about word count and never suffered writer’s block. After receiving the specs from programmers and engineers, I knew what I needed to write about. The beauty of compiling user and tech manuals…
While scrolling through Twitter a couple of years ago, I stopped to read an interesting post by an Australian songwriter. He called himself SpaceMarch, and at the time he had 252,000 Twitter followers (nice). Other than working with words, I didn’t know how much I’d have in common with a guy who writes lyrics for…
For thirteen years our at-large writing chapter has held regular critique and review sessions. Since most of the chapter’s members live a good distance from each other, our critique sessions are held online. By popular vote, we have elected to use email to share our submissions with the assigned participants in our critique session group….