It’s NaNoWriMo again! And since many of you have QUESTIONS, I decided to take an hour away from THESE REVISIONS I AM DOING to answer them.
aryanaazari asks: what is NaNoWriMo? Everyone talks about it and I don’t get it.
NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It takes place every November. The challenge is to complete a [...]

So, here we are on the first day of Blog Every Day April! I am very excited by the number of people who are participating . . . so many people who are signing on to write (or film) something EVERY SINGLE DAY this month. For example! My friends Charlieissocool, Alex “Nerimon” Day, and John [...]

I try to be very honest with other people—especially you, readers—but lying to myself is totally acceptable, and I do it well. I tell myself some whoppers, and I believe them, because I am just that skilled. Or stupid. Whichever.
One lie I am very good at telling myself is that I blog regularly. “I [...]

The final installment of a gripping saga of one writer writing things and being in a castle.
23 February 2004
FEAR OF HOT CHOCOLATE
Went to Edinburgh again today. This trip was a DREAM compared to the last one. First, left earlier. Caught bus immediately. Was in the city by 10:15. Had coffee at a fantastic place called [...]

Part four of rollicking saga about books, and sitting, and writing too many things down, all within the confines of a castle.
19 February 2004
There is something about this place that occasionally makes we want to bang my head against my desk and just keep banging and banging until I lose consciousness. I can’t quite put [...]

Chapter three in a seemingly never-ending saga about an idiot in a castle.
15 February 2004
We’ve come to understand something. This is not so much a retreat as it is a psychological experiment. I’m completely serious about this. It’s more to get the experience of being unhooked. And it has kind of unhooked us all. Nigel [...]

Here is a question every author* hates: “Where do you get your ideas from?”
The answer is: MY HEAD, but people want something more specific than that. They want something authorly and evocative that makes me seem smart. “I pull them out of my a$%,” is not the kind of thing that sounds good when [...]