One of the things I love about baseball is that it is possible to have a “perfect game.” A perfect game is one in which a pitcher faces 27 batters, and not one of them gets on base. There are no hits, no walks, no one hit by a pitch, no one ever making it…
I’ve written about how I love short science fiction. Back in September I gave myself a goal of reading a piece of short fiction a day. In other words, 365 stories a year (or in 2012, 366, since it is a leap year). I’ve done pretty well since September and so my short fiction reading…
I’ve learned a few things about setting goals for writing over the last few years. One is that they need to be realistic. The other is that they need to be entirely within your control. The last few years I realize that I’ve set not only unrealistic goals for my writing, but also goals that…
In Wednesday’s post, I listed some of my favorite short fiction that I read this year, some of it published in 2011, and some published earlier. I thought it important to mention that in all of the short fiction I read in 2011 (excluding the stories from Astounding), while there were some definite standout stories,…
I didn’t do so well meeting my writing goals for 2011. I now have some idea of why that may be, but I’ll discuss that in due course. First, let me review my fiction-writing goals from 2011 and see how I measured up in reality. My writing goals for this year included some elements that…
If you have to walk somewhere, you can read an entire short story on the way there. And another one one the way back.
Here is this month’s list of short fiction that I managed to read. I’ve been aiming for one story a day from a variety of magazines. I think I did a pretty good job this month. Just like last month, the bold titles are, in my opinion, particularly worth reading. Old Fireball by Nat Schachner…
While there are still a few hours left in September, I doubt I’ll get any more short fiction read this month, especially since the Yankees open the division playoffs tonight at 8:30. You know where I’ll be. But since I wrote a while back about at least trying to read a piece of short fiction…
Science fiction magazines are known for short fiction: stories, novelette, and the occasional novella, usually in that order of frequency. I’ve written before of my short fiction addiction and science fiction magazines are perfect for feeding that addiction. But every once in a rare while, science fiction magazines offer something almost unique to all fiction…
I’ve been on a short fiction kick lately and I am loving it1. Perhaps it is because I have spent the last several month immersed in epic fantasy novels. Short science fiction stories make for a rather dramatic change of pace. But I think there are other reasons. Short fiction has always been my first…
I am finally back to regular daily writing. For months now I’ve been struggling with a difficult story. No matter how I’d go at the story it seemed not to work for me and eventually, I kept changing my approach and rewriting so much that I got stuck in a rut and stopped making any…
Yesterday, I read an interesting interview with Nancy Kress (in Locus) in which she talks about the three things she’s learned about writing over the years. It got me thinking about what I’ve learned from my own writing. I typically describe myself as a “brute force” writer, by which I mean that I learned to…