An Easy Way To Increase Your Productivity
For the past few days I have been out in the country. Like many Czechs my in-laws have a chatu, a small place in the country, usually with minimal facilities but close to nature. On the weekends and in the long warm days of summer you leave the city, and go na chatu. Our’s is in a small village about 50 kilometres from Prague. It is surrounded by many lovely forest trails. There is no television, telephone or internet, and not much in the way of heating so we don’t go there much except in the summer. In the summer, Read more…
Writing the Warhammer Tie-in: Details
When I am writing a tie-in novel I try never to assume that the reader is familiar with the background. This sounds strange, I know. After all, the developers have spent years building the world, the artists have provided us with beautiful illustrations so we know what everything looks like and hey, players have spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours enjoying the game. They know what an ork or Chaos Warrior looks like, don’t they? They may have read dozens of Warhammer novels already. It’s a fair assumption that someone picking up a Warhammer novel is going to be a Read more…
Trollope On Writing
A few weeks back I alluded to a quote from Anthony Trollope’s Autobiography about three hours writing per day being all that was needed from an author. Being as methodical as I am lazy I have eventually dug up the actual text. “All those I think who have lived as literary men,–working daily as literary labourers,–will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. But then he should so have trained himself that he shall be able to work continuously during those three hours,–so have tutored his mind that it Read more…
Priorities For Writers
There’s a famous story about the management consultant Ivy Lee and Charles Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel (then, at the start of the 20th century, the biggest steel company in the world). Lee gave Schwab a tip for increasing his productivity and told him to try it and pay him what he thought it was worth once he had tested it. The tip was this: Make a list of what you need to do at the start of each day in the order of importance of the tasks that need to be done. Work your way down the list, finishing Read more…
Cyberpunk Stories
Cyberpunk is what the future used to look like — at least to me. It was the big SF movement of my long gone youth and preparing these old stories (written almost a quarter of a century ago) for e-pub I recaptured some of the excitement I felt about it then. Cyberpunk was exciting for me. It was hip, it was hot, it was new, it was shiny. It reflected the realities of the strange dark age of the 1980s as I understood them. This was a world where economics was everything, where corporations ruled, where governments were the servants Read more…
The Importance of Setting Your Sights Low
On the Internet recently I have been reading a lot about how you need to work hard and set yourself lofty goals in order to make it as a writer. I have been bombarded by people telling me that you need to sweat blood and work all the hours God sends. If necessary you must neglect your family in your quest for writerly glory. After all, you’ve got to make sacrifices if you want to succeed and who doesn’t? You need to constantly write and constantly promote. If you don’t, there are people who will and they will all do Read more…
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