November is just about over, and all things being equal, NaNoWriMo participants should end up with something like a ‘bad first draft’ at the end of that writing month. Which is very cool, because a bad first draft is better than no first draft. That sounds like an old aphorism, but it’s absolutely true, because … More Ten steps in book writing after the first draft’s done
I reviewed a book the other month for one of New Zealand’s magazines, whose author had no idea about how to control his tenses. It was a history book, but he relentlessly muddled up past and future tenses – the rogue word was ‘would’ and ‘would be’. This is death to historical writing for a … More How to avoid mixing up tenses in your writing
What music do you listen to when writing? Can you listen to music at all? It’s one of the most powerful tools writers can have at their disposal – especially for unsticking the muse. Put another way, you’re pretty much guaranteed to write something different while jouncing along to Katy Perry than if you hurled … More Using music to defeat writers’ block
I’ve long thought that the problem of getting stuck while writing is inversely proportional to the looming deadline. As long as you’ve got plenty of time, the muse will flow – but as soon as you’re working to x-words completed per day, with a hard deadline a few weeks off, the muse decides it’s time … More Why we get writers’ block
Have you met the self-crit demon yet in your writing? The one that nags and dogs every word you write, whose special power is paralysis. Most writers do meet it, but not all realise that it’s actually there as your friend – if you can make it so. Meeting and greeting the self-crit demon is … More Defeating the demon that lurks under your writing desk
Although some writers deny there’s any such thing as ‘writer’s block’, the fact is that all too often writers sit down for a writing session and…nothing. Sometimes it’s because the muse has fled. Sometimes it’s because the list of Good Ideas just won’t translate into the written sentence. For a lucky few of us it’s … More Knocking writers’ block into submission
The problem writers face when assembling dialogue is the fact that written and spoken English are two different things. Actual spoken English is almost incomprehensible if you transliterate it – a mess of half-phrases, fillers, pauses, switches of direction and broken sentences. The reason’s that verbal communication is only part of the spoken story – … More How to write compelling dialogue
It’s been interesting to read some of the reader comments (‘reviews’) of my novella ‘Missionary’, which was published in the first volume of the Endless Worlds anthology series last year. I deliberately wrote it as a homage to dieselpunk – specifically, 1950s atomic-age dieselpunk of the kind written by Heinlein and Clarke. The starship had … More An insight into reader reviews of your books
The problem with writing is that it’s only about 1 percent inspiration. The rest is sweat. It’s a lesson definitely driven home during National Novel Writing Month. Everybody writes differently, but it seems to me that one of the reasons why cranking out 50,000 words in 30 days is so sweat-worthy is because it’s too … More Writing is 99 percent sweat… so don’t sweat it
One of the biggest challenges writers face these days is keeping focus on their writing. The world’s full of distractions. None of it is helped by the fact that these days we’re conditioned to have an attention span of around – OOOH, POSSUM! – fifteen seconds. That’s one of the down-sides of the internet where, … More How to keep focus while you write
Matthew Wright 
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