A few Angry Robot links that tickled me
By
There’s a sort-of-review of Triumff over at Cold Iron & Rowan Wood. The reviewer attempts to describe the piece in a sentence that made me chuckle:
I’m just going to put it down to it being Bloody Weird, which given that it’s Dan Abnett writing for Angry Robot books is probably par for the course.
Over at the World SF blog, Nick Wood namechecks Moxyland author Lauren Beukes, describing her as “a writer to watch – for both now and the future!” which is fair and just.
A truly great post by Colin Harvey over at Crossed Genres in which he describes his processes and influences in creating Winter Song. Grab a cup of coffee before you start this one, though – it’s a good, long read.
The beginning writer often believes that to keep their voice ‘pure’ they should stay free of other writer’s influences by not reading anyone else’s work, but the truth is that no human being is unaffected by the external world, and as we gain experience we realize that that’s actually a good thing, both to carry into the future hints and glimpses of those no longer with us, and that it also makes us better, more rounded individuals. What we used to call ‘wisdom’ is actually an accumulation of experiences, stimuli and thoughts.
And finally, that Bibliophile Stalker, Charles Tan, interviews our very own Tim Waggoner, author of the extraordinarily popular Nekropolis. Gauntlets are thrown…
Learning to write at a publishable level was the biggest hurdle because it takes a while to become good at anything. Writing is often done on your own, with minimal feedback, and it’s difficult to get feedback from publishing professionals because they’re busy doing their own writing. A lot of the teachers who teach writing classes aren’t writing at a professional level yet (and maybe never will), which is WHY they teach. So I slogged along on my own for years, taking a few classes here and there, submitting work and getting rejected by editors, until finally, in my late twenties I began to sell regularly. Pros often speak of persistence being the most important quality that new writers need, and if it’s not the most vital quality, it’s up there.
