History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

The Evolving Short Story Market from 2024 Nebulas Conference

| September 16, 2024

In addition to catching up on WriteHive panels, I’m also working through my list of panels at the 2024 Nebulas Conference that I didn’t get to watch at the time they were broadcast online. (If you have a 2024 Nebulas membership, you can watch the saved videos and more; if you don’t have one, you […]

Completing The Wayward Writer!

| September 9, 2024

Throughout 2023 and most of 2024, I worked through the entirety of Ariel Gore’s The Wayward Writer. I took a few weeks off here and there for vacations, but I basically spent 78 weeks working through one exercise a week. I talked a little bit about hitting the halfway point here. Overall, I found the entire […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Fear Factors: A Horror Genre Master Class

| September 2, 2024

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! I’ve caught up on a number of genre-specific panels, including Fear Factor: A Horror Genre Master Class. Horror […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: How to Write When You Don’t Want To (The Afronauts)

| August 26, 2024

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! The Afronauts presented How to Write When You Don’t Want To, which was a great place to start […]

Writing Tools: Reckless Deck: Psyche

| August 18, 2024

I’ve accumulated a large collection of card-based writing tools, each of which is useful to different parts of my writing process. So I’ve decided to do a series of posts about the various decks I own and how I use them in my writing. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a new set of […]

Guest Post: Queering the Regency by Natania Barron

| August 12, 2024

Today I have a guest post from Natania Barron, author of Netherford Hall, which she summarizes as “Pride and Prejudice and Witches,” but which also is a sapphic Regency-era tale! So I asked Natania to talk a little about queer folks (particularly women) during the Regency for her guest post today! ~ Queering the Regency As […]

Self-Awareness and Writing

| August 5, 2024

If you are prone to making excuses to not write or doubt your skill, check out this article about self-awareness and writing. It has a lot of good advice for dealing with those self-conscious doubts that slip into our minds, and how to be aware of their toxicity, while also giving pointers on how to […]

Developmental Editing at WriteHive Online Conference

| July 29, 2024

I moderated one panel at the WriteHive Online Conference earlier this year, which was “Developmental Editing Basics for Aspiring Editors.” Though I’ve been an editor for 20+ years, I’ve mainly focused on copyediting and proofreading, so getting to listen to a bunch of talented developmental editors talk about the tips and tricks they use, as […]

Revision Process: Short Fiction

| July 22, 2024

Last week, I talked about my revision process for very short pieces (drabbles, microfiction, and flash). This week, I’m talking about my revision process for short stories. First, I always try to finish the first draft before tinkering with it. The struggle is real, because I’m an editor, so I’m always tempted to start revising […]

Revision Process: Very Short Pieces

| July 15, 2024

I had the idea to write a post about my revision process, but it occurred to me that it’s different depending on the length of the piece I’m revising. When I’m writing novella or novel length pieces, my revision wall is my go to method. But the revision wall is way too much when I’m […]