dawn.vogel | April 4, 2022
It’s been roughly three months since I decided that I would put novels on the VERY backburner for 2022. I told myself that I would check in with this decision roughly quarterly to decide if it was still working for me. So far, the answer is a resounding yes. I’m still juggling a lot of […]
dawn.vogel | March 28, 2022
One of the most valuable takeaways I’ve gotten from the productivity and creativity classes I worked on earlier this year is the idea of time tracking. In my day job, we track the amount of time we spend on projects in 15-minutes increments, so it’s not something that was foreign to me. But the idea […]
dawn.vogel | March 21, 2022
I’ve talked before about the idea of “writing play,” in which you aren’t necessarily writing with an end goal in mind. But it’s a hard thing to do when you’ve got things you want to get done, and it’s especially hard if, like me, you often take on a lot at any given time. I’m […]
dawn.vogel | March 14, 2022
As I mentioned previously, I’m working through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled very slowly to absorb as much wisdom as I can about writing poetry. This week’s post covers Chapter 1, Section 1, on spoken English, meter, and iambic pentameter. The beginning of this chapter talks a lot about stressed and unstressed syllables, and how […]
dawn.vogel | March 7, 2022
We’re edging toward spring in the northern hemisphere, which makes now seem like a good time for a little writing spring cleaning! Many authors have a folder on their computer where they dump a lot of half-finished projects, snippets of dialogue, and story ideas. You might call it “pieces” (like I do), “junk,” “ideas,” “someday,” […]
dawn.vogel | February 28, 2022
There are many pitfalls that can trip up a speculative fiction author. This article talks about the seven deadly sins of speculative fiction, but more than that, it gives recommendations on how to avoid those pitfalls, which is key to improving your stories!
dawn.vogel | February 21, 2022
I recently learned that in 2005, comedian and actor Stephen Fry published a book about writing poetry, something he does as a hobby. Though I write my poetry for publication, I thought it might be delightful to learn about writing poetry from someone I adore so much. So I picked up a copy of the […]
dawn.vogel | February 14, 2022
I’m always looking for new tips on writing, particular writing flash fiction and other short lengths of stories. This article, sharing information from a 1946 article on “short-short stories,” was surprisingly salient more than fifty years later! Some of the tips are still around, albeit worded differently for a more modern audience. But the tips […]
dawn.vogel | February 7, 2022
It’s always interesting to look at the ways in which technology in fiction impacts the stories we tell. This 1986 essay by Ursula K. LeGuin posits the idea that bags, or storage containers in general, are a more significant part of technological advances than most people think, and that by focusing fiction in that direction, […]
dawn.vogel | January 24, 2022
As I mentioned previously, I’m doing a lot of work this year with productivity and scheduling. As part of this, I’ve been tracking where my time goes in fifteen-minute increments throughout the day to see when I’m working on what type of project, and how much time I’m spending on things. One of the things […]
