Being a Better Writer: Finding Your Strengths—and Weaknesses · 9:00pm Jan 8th, 2018
Welcome back readers! It's a new year! 2018!
Granted, I'm still running a bit behind on 2017. Patreon Supporters, you'll have your December post as soon as Jungle is done, by the way. I'm just ... so close to having Jungle done it's a miracle I'm even doing this post. No joke. Jungle is sitting at over halfway through the second-to-last chapter, which means I'll likely finish it today, tomorrow, or Wednesday.
Am I excited? Yes I am. This book has been the labor of a year now, and is sitting at about 450,000 words. For the record, that's a third again as long as Colony, which was only 345,000 words. There will be much editing to be had here.
But that's in the future. See, once Jungle's first draft is done, I can sit back, relax, and get started on the publication process for Shadow of an Empire. Which means the new year will begin with some buckled-down editing and lots of happy Alpha and Beta readers (which also means Alpha and Beta readers take note; the time is come!), and then after that, work will begin on Hunter/Hunted!
There's more to come past that, but for now that bit of news will do. After all, it's a new year, and most you have been starving for a new Being a Better Writer post for some time now. So let's get going with the first official topic of 2018!
Finding your strengths, and your weaknesses, and using them.
That was good, although I think it might be worth considering a followup with a list of recommended authors to help people find references to patch their weaknesses. In many cases people who have a weakness in one area will at least partially have it because they generally don't read that kind of thing (or at least not as often), so they might not know where to look for useful references without help.
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While I could, I honestly feel it's a bit better for a reader if they're discovering this on their own. Aiming someone at a book is good, but it does have the drawback of laser-guiding their focus, often to the exclusion of anything else (see almost every school reading assignment ever). But if the message is "Go out and read a lot of stuff looking for strengths to learn about," the reader is looking at everything as a whole and training themselves to critically examine the whole thing and find those strengths on their own, which in turn gets their mind working on how those elements are strengths.
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That's a fair point, and google means it shouldn't be too hard to at least find some leads via online discussions these days. You might still want to put together a list of recommended reading (if you haven't already) with a brief description of why people should read the book in question, although that would be more of general suggestions than specific advice about a particular topic.
You went to college for creative writing? Heh, that's what I'm in the middle of! ^.^ Where'd you go?
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I went for multiple things actually. But Creative Writing was certainly one of them. BYU (which is how I got that class taught by Brandon Sanderson, which was a lot of fun).
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Oh, just one class, then?
I'm currently going to the only school in my area that offered creative writing as a major.
(This is the part where I brag about being more educated, right? So exciting!)
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Just one with Brandon. But a lot of other English writing courses as well.
And hey, brag away. Education is good!