History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Writing Tools: Story Engine

| September 13, 2021

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. Story Engine is an amazing deck-based plot generator. It lets you […]

When Planning Goes Awry

| September 6, 2021

I am very much a planner. I have spreadsheets and planner books and to-do lists that keep me on track with my writing. And even though I make adjustments to them all the time, I’m NEVER without a plan. However, I was supposed to undergo surgery on September 1st. In anticipation of that, I cleared […]

Dealing with Deadlines

| August 23, 2021

I’m fortunate that I’m at a stage of my writing career when the majority of my deadlines are self-imposed, rather than external. On most of the occasions where I do have an external deadline, it’s one I’ve chosen to try to meet for a call for submissions or other opportunity. But it’s fairly unusual for […]

Writing Tools: Reckless Deck Worlds

| August 16, 2021

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. I’ve talked previously about the core Reckless Deck, but today, I’m […]

Scheduling My Weeks

| August 9, 2021

I’ve recently switched from using a weekly planner to using a daily planner. Instead of having seven days spread over two small pages, I now have a single day on a large page. It’s both wonderful and a little overwhelming. It’s nice to have space to not have to scrawl what amount to shorthand notes […]

Question: How Much Historical Research?

| July 26, 2021

I was talking to a newer author of historical fiction recently, and one of the questions they had for me was how much historical research do you need to do before writing historical fiction? My terribly unhelpful answer is, of course, it varies. If I’m writing a short story that’s tied to historical events in […]

Writing Tools: World Roulette

| July 19, 2021

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. I’ve talked previously about World Roulette as a worldbuilding tool, which is […]

Writing Tools: Reckless Deck

| June 21, 2021

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. Though it was originally envisioned as an artist prompt deck, Reckless Deck, […]

Interesting Panels at the Nebulas

| June 14, 2021

The first weekend in June was SFWA’s Nebula Conference Online, and I took a day off work so I could attend a few panels, hold office hours for authors looking for critiques, and watch a little bit of the Nebula Awards (I would have watched them all, but we were gaming during the second half). […]

Poetry Form: Luc Bat

| June 7, 2021

I’m back to writing some new form poetry, so it’s time to talk about another form! Today’s form is the Vietnamese Luc bat (the proper rendering includes marks that I can’t render here, but you can see them if you click that link for the Wikipedia article). The name means, simply, “six eight,” which refers to […]