Timeline/Perspective

Mpepper/ February 22, 2021/ Flashbacks, Think Pieces, Writing Advice

Years ago, when I was feeling bad about my lack of success as a writer, I made a timeline of my writing history to remind myself of how far I’d come. I don’t know where that timeline is now, or even what software I used to make it, but I do still find looking back at my journey gives me

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Writers as Competition?

Mpepper/ January 29, 2021/ Think Pieces, Writing Advice

I came late to Twitter’s “Harsh Writing Advice” trend, but apparently someone posted that other writers are your competition, and then got slammed, and then deleted the tweet, but of course (because Internet) it’s still around in various formats. People piled on this guy for posting this, and… given that he didn’t really explain his logic (if there was any),

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On the Naming of Characters

Mpepper/ January 28, 2021/ Think Pieces, Writing Advice

This question has come up a lot just recently, so I decided to write a post about it: “How do you name your characters?” I prefer to have my characters introduce themselves. Sometimes they do that right away, meaning I know their name first thing. Sometimes, though, they’re a bit shy about it, and we play a game of Rumpelstiltskin.

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Writing Advice: Load-Bearing Literature

Mpepper/ December 23, 2020/ Writing Advice

I’m going to tell you a little secret about writing. (It’s not really a secret. Lots of people know this. But I’m going to reiterate it anyway.) There are many things that are fun to write. Certain scenes. Writers often play with their characters as if they were dolls in a dollhouse. We try out a few things, see what

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