Aqua Vitae
Jenes Inarya wants to live to experience everything, and it just might be possible. Her quest for immortality leads her through myth and legend to the farthest reaches of the galaxy (well, so the Jericho magazine article said, although it’s prone to exaggeration). And it’s only the beginning. The rest of a very long life is about to start–but Jenes doesn’t yet know how to live it. “Aqua Vitae is only 70-pages long, but manages to pack a lot…part...
Read More12 Words to (Almost Always) Cut
Strong stories are not necessarily short. They don’t need to be Hemingway-esque masterpieces of bare prose (even Hemingway didn’t always write that way). And it would be hypocritical to argue for only short sentences or short paragraphs when I have to make a conscious effort to write either. But in a strong story, every word counts. And no word is misplaced or ill-chosen. The vocabulary is vivid and usually varied, plus precise (though alliteration is optional). Words do not...
Read MoreThe Big List of Writing Writing Resources, Part One
You can write your story with nothing but a reasonably flat surface and something that leaves a mark, but it’s a lot easier when you have the right tools. Happily, there are a lot of useful resources out there. Here are some of my favorites. I encountered a few while writing The Starter Guide for Professional Writers (about which I have exciting news: revisions and expansions are underway for a second edition! The past two years have seen some interesting changes in the publishing...
Read MoreLiving With Imposter Syndrome–Guest Post Live on Fictionvale!
The first mercy of impostor syndrome, in my experience at least, is that it isn’t constant. Instead it attacks at intervals, at moments of either my deepest despair or highest success. Of course success attracts this psychological beastie’s attention: in the grips of impostor syndrome, my jerky brain is happy to dismiss any achievement as a fluke or a fraud. I’ve either tricked people into thinking I can write, or they’ve reviewed my manuscript favorably from pity for someone so pathetically...
Read MoreAll the Grammar Knowledge You Need for NaNo
National Novel Writing Month is not the time to become a grammar expert. The entire idea of this challenge is to stop worrying and write, that is, to churn out 1600+ words of prose each day, prose whose main glory is that it exists, not that it is perfect. Stopping to study capitalizing, punctuation, and sentence structure can only be a distraction, and probably a dispiriting one. That said, NaNoWriMo is also not a great time to be slowed down by worrying whether you’ve punctuated this...
Read MoreWhere You Can Get the Starter Guide for Professional Writers
I’m happy to announce that The Starter Guide for Professional Writers is now available at most online retailers! The Starter Guide for Professional Writers contains everything to know so that you can begin earning money for your writing. Ten chapters address every stage of writing, revising, releasing, and promoting your first (or second, or third) published story, including what you need to: Defeat writer’s block and finish your story Revise to make the strongest manuscript...
Read More“The Queen’s Arrival” in Liquid Imagination, and a Christmas Gift Idea
My mythic fantasy piece “The Queen’s Arrival” has been reprinted in Liquid Imagination Issue #19. It’s actually been up nearly a week, and I apologize for posting the link so late–though as you can see, things have been busy. I’ve only just got around to making my Christmas card & gift list and am starting to scrape together time, ideas, and money to fulfill it. Speaking of which: If you’re lost on gift ideas for a writer in your life–surely...
Read MoreHappy National Novel Writing Month!
For several hundred thousand writers, the great challenge of the year has just launched: for the next 30 days, they will be scrambling to maintain a semi-functional life while also producing 1,667 words per day, to end with a 50,000 word story on December 1st. I wish them luck. While I can’t deny the glories of a creative adrenaline surge, I have never managed to get more than 35,000 words in November, and have several times had to step back and let the challenge go before I had a...
Read MoreUseful Things of the Week
I don’t know if I’m actually going to make this a weekly post, but I suppose it depends on how much cool and useful stuff I find over the course of the week. An excellent quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Airman’s Odyssey comes to mind as I revise another article: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Deleting excess words, trimming a piece down to its...
Read MoreWIP Name And Shame
A writer’s blog is nothing if not a way to hold myself accountable. Here’s the progress I’ve made on my main writing projects, as of October 1st, 2013. Starter Guide for Professional Writers–I’m just past halfway through the second draft, which is already 20,000 words longer than the first. In hindsight the first draft was just a very detailed outline. I’ve fleshed it out with more examples, explanation, and a few new ideas or good old ideas that I’d...
Read MoreAbout Therese
Therese Arkenberg's first short story was accepted for publication on January 2, 2008, and her second acceptance came a few hours later. Since then they haven't always been in such a rush, yet her work appears in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Analog, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Sword & Sorceress XXIV. Aqua Vitae, her science fiction novella, was released by WolfSinger Publications in December 2011.
She works as a freelance editor and writer in Wisconsin, where she returned after a brief but unforgettable time in Washington, D.C. When she isn't reading, writing, or editing (it's true!) she serves on the board of the Plowshare Center of Waukesha, which works for social, economic, and environmental justice.