Robert Wack

Writing

  • A journalist, a priest and Albert Einstein walk into a bar…

    Last month, I participated in an event called Ignite Carroll, part of the national Ignite series, where a speaker has five minutes and twenty slides to share a topic. I took a stab at it and it went well, though I was clearly outclassed by many of the other speakers who gave much more polished

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  • Scam-a-rama

    Well, this is something I didn’t expect. I mentioned before the new (to me) expectation that authors are supposed to do the lion’s share of the marketing and promotion of their work, and that the publishing industry is fragmenting into a jungle of “consultants” seeking to help with every step in the editing, publishing, and

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  • Summer Update

    Summertime, and the living’s easy. Trying to get some writing done, enjoying time off, and let’s be honest, the old “writers have to market” hustle has taken a back seat to other priorities. Hence, the lack of updates in a while. Regarding the time off: my paying job came to an abrupt end back in

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  • Breadcrumbs vs. Spoonfeeding

    One challenge all writers of fiction encounter at some point is how much detail to give, especially around interesting plot points. Too much, and you risk killing the narrative flow by sounding tedious and pedantic. Too little, and the reader may become confused and lose interest. I call this Breadcrumbs versus Spoonfeeding. Every cool story

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  • Cecelia Payne

    One thing about writing in the SF genre is the challenge of constraining your speculations by what known science says is possible, or if you really want to loosen up, what might be possible. To do that, you have to get into the actual science quite a bit to make sure you know where the

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  • In the Beginning…

    Since this is the first of many blog posts about writing generally, and science fiction particularly, perhaps it’s appropriate to start at my beginning with the genre. Although I’m sure there were other books before, the first sci-fi novel that I remember to this day as making a deep impression on me is Andre Norton’s Daybreak:

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