On Writing Fantasy: Some Links to Helpful Sites and Articles

I have been writing since 1987, working on several novels, short stories and nonfiction. Over the years, I’ve come across several helpful websites and articles about writing fantasy which I’ll share here

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“Five Things Epic Fantasy Writers Could Learn From Dorothy Dunnett”   by Marie Brennan is a recent article on TOR.com .  The article’s helpful ideas can help writers improve their stories of epic fantasy. The article can be found at: 

http://www.tor.com/2015/06/29/five-things-epic-fantasy-writers-could-learn-from-dorothy-dunnett/

Magical Words is a website where several authors post articles each week about various aspects of writing such as grammar, plotting, the publishing business, etc. Authors include David B. Coe, Melissa Massey, and several others. The website is at:  http://www.magicalwords.net

Mythic Scribes is a website devoted to writing fantasy fiction. Here writers will find articles about writing and forums to discuss issues. The site is at:  http://mythicscribes.com/

Write SF is a free writing course by author Jeffrey Carver Though aimed at young adults, new writers can get useful information on the basics of writing fantasy and science fiction. The website is:  http://www.writesf.com

Mythcreants is a site that has articles on writing as well as analysis of writing. There are also articles on role playing games for those who like games.  The website is at:  http://www.mythcreants.com

Fantasy Faction is a British site full of articles about writing, book reviews and author interviews.  Something is posted almost every day. The site is available at:  http://fantasy-faction.com/

Holly Lisle is a professional, published author of fantasy and other books. She has classes on writing and books on her web site. The site is at:  http://www.hollylisle.com

Another helpful site is SF Signal which has daily news about fantasy and science fiction. The daily post on links is very helpful to find articles about books, movies, TV shows and writing. This site can be found at:  http://www.sfsignal.com/

The sites and articles above are just a few of the hundreds that can be found on the Internet. They are useful to help you get started writing and to keep writing. In the end though, it's more important to stop reading about writing and to just write.

My Writing Experiment

Just a small post while I work on articles.

This summer I decided on trying to increase my writing productivity. I bought the voice recognition software Dragon Naturally Speaking to help me. I’m old school as a writer. I write my stuff down on paper first. I can’t compose stories to a blank computer screen no matter how hard I’ve tried. Revise yes, write no. Since I began writing in 1987, most of my writing is in notebooks, which I later typed into the word processor documents. With Dragon Dictate, I feel I can read the stuff from my notebooks faster than typing. So far, I’m in a learning curve with the program. I’ll let people know how it’s going and if it helped in future posts. Keep writing until then.

Aspiring Writers? No!

A panel I attended about writing at a recent sf convention inspired my writing this summer. One of the panelists said that we weren’t aspiring writers, we were writers, just not published. An aspiring writer is someone who wants to write, but hasn’t put anything down on paper or computer yet. You are a writer if you write something every day. You’re just aspiring to be published. So let’s just keep writing, revising and submitting our works. You aspiring writers? Go write something now!