the work

He’s unlikable, but he’s also the only person on the expedition who actually does anything. He always takes action. I set up, hopefully, the situation where the reader maybe doesn’t like him but they still are like, “Oh, he actually tried to do something!” That’s useful in terms of how we think of characterization, because we’re often led astray by... See more

Characters like Nikolai and Stoner, who react to life more often than they “take action”—whatever that term means—are often labeled by my students as passive characters. Sometimes a student is advised by his or her peers to give characters “higher stakes” or “more agency .” This tends to lead me to groan internally. Isn’t living from day to day... See more

The recurring hypocrisy makes me wonder: Do we *actually* not want people to go through what we went through....or do we secretly think what we went through is foundational to good work?

Then also recognizing that there are certain effects in horror movies and weird movies that can be translated into fiction in a useful way. Not like jump cuts and crude stuff like that. But I pull from movies all the time in my fiction, I just try to translate it in such a way that it’s interesting in terms of craft and not just about scares or... See more

Thinking through —rather than just thinking—is important. A thought or an idea is never that precious. People have thoughts and ideas all the time, many of them preliminary. Sometimes people mistake their feelings for thoughts and ideas, which are in turn mistaken for absolute truths. The point of writing and reading fiction is not to stay with the... See more

Have I been doomed by competence? What if I die a better administrator than an artist?

You didn’t know quite what you thought, and you didn’t know quite how to respond to the conversation you found yourself drawn into. Maybe it felt exciting; more likely, a bit embarrassing to be dumbstruck and tongue-tied. Now you have something—maybe preliminary, doubtless evolving, but recognizably your own contribution to an ineluctably social... See more

And the only way to practice is by doing. I spend a lot of time contemplating the approach. The systems I need in place before I can work. The desire for a perfect plan to execute the perfect result. I forget, too often, that simply doing the thing – flawed but finished – is what will lead me to my goals. Intention matters but only when paired with... See more

When an agent, editor, or publisher says "fantasy" or "thriller" or "literature" or "general fiction" we're not making a deep textual analysis of the book. The question isn't one of themes or lineages or even particularly the aesthetic elements. The question is, "where the hell do we want them to put this in the bookstore?"