Not a big writing day yesterday, unfortunately. I did manage to scrape together another 404 words on The Ghost Smuggler but that took me to the end of a chapter and I didn’t want to start another one. I’m going to struggle to find time to do any writing today – I have an early dentist appointment and the first night of our Marathon clinic this evening. I’m still on track for a a 2,500 word week though, thanks to the good start I got on Sunday. I did make my 200th submission last night – This Is Not the Apocalypse You’re Looking For to Clarkesworld – plus a couple more bringing this year’s total submissions to 27. It looks like I’ll easily break last year’s submission tally of 36. Yes, I track all that stuff. The increase in submissions is partly due to me sticking to Heinlein’s Fifth Rule but also because there’s a decent number of good quality markets that measure their response times in weeks or even days rather than months. It’s a lot easier to send a lot of stories out if it doesn’t take long for the rejections to come back. One day I’ll post some stats on … Read More
Heinlein’s Writing Rules
This is the third in a series of Meaty Monday posts – longer posts where I ramble on about writing related topics. You can find the first Meaty Monday post here. This time I’m talking about Robert A. Heinlein’s five writing rules. I first heard Robert A. Heinlein’s writing rules quoted by Neil Gaiman when he was in Vancouver promoting Anansi Boys and they’ve stuck with me ever since. They were originally published in Heinlein’s 1947 essay On the Writing of Speculative Fiction (republished in Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, among other places). The bulk of the essay is about the types of science fiction stories (human interest or gadget-centric) and the three plots that human interest stories can have – “boy meets girl”, “the Little Tailor” (the little guy who becomes a big shot or vice versa) and “the man who learned better”. It’s Heinlein’s five rules or “business habits” as he calls them that have gained the most attention though. 1. You must write This one is obvious really, let’s face it, but all around the world there are people that would like to be writers but aren’t actually doing any writing. 2. You must finish what you start More good, solid advice. This is one I follow … Read More