Tag: blog
-
A ‘no system’ writing system
Perhaps the dirtiest secret of my writing process is that I completely lack a ‘system.’ No strict word count per day. No specific writing times. Minimal outlining. No spreadsheets of character traits or motivations. And no fancy software or virtual assistants. It’s just me and the ol’ blank page, waging war. Of course, I don’t…
-
Discovering a genre while (accidentally) writing in it
When friends and family ask me about the plot of my debut novel, The Side Questers, I sometimes find myself getting cagey with the details. Not because I’m embarrassed by its content or quality, but because I can’t help but think the average person would have no interest whatsoever. After all, it’s a book I…
-
Can Fans Save Us From AI Media?
It’s September 2014, and I’m sitting in Bioinformatics 527, learning about machine learning models and how to apply them to genomics data. The instructor describes how these models “learn” (read: iterate and predict) from the provided inputs. I’m gonna be honest, the math went way over my head, but the concept was intriguing, and there…
-
Writing Science…Fiction
At the ripe old age of three, I wrote ‘The Man Who Lost His Hat,’ a deep tale of stick-figure regret and personal anguish (yes, I still have the “manuscript”), but apart from that, I didn’t do much writing in my early years. I recall a grade school sci-fi story co-written with my best friend…
-
Revisiting my first query attempt (circa 2019)
Querying a novel is a difficult thing to do. Indeed, I would argue it’s even more difficult to “get right” than actually, you know, writing the book. I’m sure there are a rare few out there who land representation from the very first query they jot down, but for the rest of us mere mortals,…
-
A first post about a first (failed) book
In the fall of 2011, I was a senior in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at the University of Michigan, and despite a full load of coursework and an active social life, I made the head-scratching decision to start a writing a novel. The result was terrible, and I don’t plan to ever share…
J.J. Kochmanski 