• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Research and Study

    We Study In All Sorts of Ways… Normally I don’t say much about my reading or other activities except when I am detailing out a few days while writing a project in a challenge. Like the five day novel challenge. I do a little more detail on the short story challenges about the life around writing them. But not all of it by a long ways. But tonight I’ll tell you what I did for a few hours. I found myself studying a puzzle mystery form. Castle, the very first season when it was great, was a great puzzle mystery series pretending to be set in a police station. Not…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    Chapter Six: Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Researching Fiction

    Series Note: I am now working on updating each chapter and putting together this book, finally, after over 100,000 words that started back in 2009. So I am updating each chapter and putting it up here now for those who have not seen them.  One new updated chapter every few days will still take me all summer to finish. Feel free to make comments and talk about each topic. And again, anyone who has donated over the years will get a free electronic version of the book when it is all done. Thanks again for the support! —- Researching for a short story or novel is one of what I…

  • Fun Stuff,  On Writing

    Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Researching Fiction

    Those following this series had to know I would reach this topic eventually. Researching for a novel is one of what I call the half-truth myths. Yet I have known writer after writer that have had entire careers stopped cold by this myth. It takes a writer a certain time and distance to find the right half-way-point with research in novels. So let me see if I can make some sense out of this. Fact: Nonfiction writing requires you get it right, that you have your research done correctly in all ways and even documented correctly. No discussion on that at all. If you are writing nonfiction, research is not…