Point of View

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POINT OF VIEW: Writing What I Don’t Know

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unknown - pixabay

I long ago discarded that old tried and true truism of writing – “write what you know.” While I get the sentiment behind it – you can best convey ideas, characters, and places with which you are already conversant – I also find it also intensely limiting, especially as a writer of sci fi and fantasy fiction. One of the ways I set out to break this idea down is by writing characters who are not at all like me. In “The Shoreless Sea,” my trilogy ender coming out in October, that has put me far out on three different … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Gardening is Writing

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We writers are creative folk. Beyond writing, it’s not uncommon for us to have other creative pursuits – art, music, theater… or even gardening. I started vegetable gardening when I was in Junior High. Two of my friends went to the store with me, and we got seeds and soil and planted a garden in the side yard. I’d never really experienced some of the things we grew fresh. This was in the late seventies and early eighties, and much of what we ate at home came out of tin cans. The first time I had some fresh-cooked green beans … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Immersion

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immersion - pixabay

Last week I talked about the day-to-day distractions that take us out of or away from our writing time. Today I want to talk about immersion. Mark and I have been studying the Italian language for eleven years. It’s something I really enjoy, and something Mark and I do together a few times a week. Italian has become our own “secret” language, our way to communicate with each other when we don’t want the people around us to know what we’re saying. Of course, that only works if they’re not Italians. 😛 But as good as we’ve become at conjugation, … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Writing Is hard.

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penny - pixabay

Have you ever seen the movie Somewhere in Time? It featured Superman’s Christopher Reeve in a heartbreaking time traveler’s tale that revolved around a single penny. Reeve’s character found a way to go back in time by surrounding himself entirely with objects from the past and willing himself back to their period. His undoing? A single modern penny, forgotten in his pants pocket, that ultimately shatters the illusion and sends him back to his own time. Writing is like that, especially writing stories of the past or the future. We all know the present well enough, but throw one bad … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: When Life Throws You a Curve Ball

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curve ball - pixabay

I am not where I thought I’d be today. One of my family members had a health issue requiring sudden relocation from Sacramento to Tucson, Arizona, throwing my normal ordered schedule into chaos. I’m not officially OCD, but I do love to have things proceed according to schedule. It’s how I keep so many balls in the air at once – relationship, work, writing, and occasionally sleeping and eating. But a trip like this throws all that out the window. And who knew how difficult it could be to find good wifi in this day and age? Still, these are … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Small Joys

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Being a writer is a lonely profession. Most of your time is spent in front of your computer, alone, trying to spin words into worlds and fighting off those dreaded twin feelings of fraud and failure. So when something good happens, even if it’s just a “small joy,” you learn to embrace it and use it to feed your writing soul. Yesterday, my short story “Chinatown” came back from the first magazine I had submitted it to. It was rejected, but accompanied by a very nice note saying that the editor hoped it would find a home elsewhere. So I … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Things to Know About Me

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scott-bunny

Usually I use this space to talk about all things authorly, but today I thought I’d go a little more personal. I am deeply weird, in case you haven’t figured that out yet. So here are ten things about me you may not know. I Don’t Like Coffee. Yeah, I know. I am that one guy in the whole world who doesn’t drink the stuff (except for once in a while in frappucino form, with lots of mint and java chips and sugar to hide the taste). OTOH, drop me into a bookstore where there’s the mixed smell of coffee … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Climbing the Walls of SFWA (And Unleashing My Secret Creativity)

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Climbing - pixabay

I’m on a bit of an odyssey this year. I have always wanted to be a sci fi writer, and over the last five years, I have achieved that dream. In addition to my gay romance tales, I have published five sci fi novels, with a sixth due out in October. But one thing has eluded me. Most successful sci fi writers (and I use that term in the popular/financial sense) are members of SFWA (say it with me – “siff-wah”) – the Sci Fi Writer’s Association. But there’s a catch. To join, you have to either make at least … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: I Am My Father’s Son

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Bill Coatsworth

I am my father’s son. My father and mother separated when I was a little kid. Near as I can tell from the pictures, it was in 1973, when I was four or five. My Dad and Mom were… let’s just say, less than a perfect match for each other. When they divorced, my Dad moved out to an apartment across town, and I stayed with my Mom. That’s not to say that my Dad moved out of my life. Far from it. For all the angst in their relationship with each other, they always agreed on one thing – … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Crashing Back to Earth

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Two weeks ago today, “Ithani” hit the stands. Well, not so much the stands as the ‘zons and ‘nobles and ‘spinners of the virtual world. It started out amazingly, with five-star reviews – deep, insightful ones that made me cry and feel like I had finally figured this whole writing gig out. I sold some books, and basked in the praise. I even asked Angel to call me a “soulless, derivative hack”, to help bring me down a few pegs from those shining heights. It’s never good for your writing when you become overly confident, and sometimes you need life … Read more