By Michael Michel
Regardless of where you end up on the journey known as being a writer, my guess is you want to enjoy the experience. Here’s my recommendation: focus more on the crafter than the craft. As the crafter, you are the instrument through which creativity flows and stories are shared with the world. If you want to be successful, start writing the story you’d love for yourself, first.
by Kate Baker
“Why SFWA?” and “What can it do for me?” These two questions have stumped many a SFWA board member, volunteer, and employee throughout our existence. The typical answer had always been, “Bragging rights and oh, the emergency medical fund.” While those two things are definitely beneficial, I’m here to tell you that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is so much more.
by Sandra M. Odell
I love intricate, detailed worldbuilding; it’s the backbone of science fiction and fantasy stories, even those set in the modern era. Sadly, few things make me stop reading faster than the realization that a writer gave more thought to the description of a meal than they did to the how or why an accommodation for a character with disabilities came to be in a story. Inclusion and representation matter, and so do the supports that allow an individual with disabilities to interact with a writer’s world.
by Paul Jessup
It seems to happen every single time I work on something larger than a novella. The minute I finish it, it seems like all of my creativity for fiction dries up.
by Barbara E. Hill
Because of this diminutive rose-colored darling I learned a lot about life, relationships, and especially about writing.
“But… wait, what? Writing?” you ask. “A donkey taught you about writing?”
The Internet Archive (Archive.org) is carrying out a very large and growing program of scanning entire books and posting them on the public Internet. It is calling this project “Open Library,” but it is SFWA’s understanding that this is not library lending, but direct infringement of authors’ copyrights.
Beginning this year, bestselling author George R. R. Martin is funding a scholarship for an Odyssey student. The Miskatonic Scholarship will be awarded to a promising writer of Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
by Paul Jessup
It will probably happen to you. Almost every career for a professional writer hits a snag at some point. Usually after a huge burst of activity and a feeling of momentum, of going somewhere. It comes out of nowhere, out of left field.
by Amber Massey
There’s a zen phrase that asks, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” For writers, here’s a different question: If you write a story and no one is able to read it, have you really told it? Typography and fonts have a big impact on readability.
by Jeffe Kennedy
It’s apropos that “Lonen’s War,” book one in my Fantasy Romance series, “Sorcerous Moons,” is featured in the first SFWA Fantasy StoryBundle. That’s because the fantastically smart and helpful folks in SFWA helped me out with a worldbuilding challenge.
In the sequel to the critically acclaimed Hot Moon, set in an alternate 1983, Apollo astronaut Vivian Carter and her crew barely survive an armed attack from mysterious assailants at the lunar South Pole … and that’s just the beginning.
Robyn Dabney, an author and freelance copyeditor, is known for her fantasy trilogies, The Soul Mender Trilogy and The Daughter of the Summit & Sea (The Ascenditure), as well as her sci-fi short Cracked and horror short The Utburd.
