Jim Macdonald is by all accounts an excellent teacher, and now there’s this thread he started at the AbsoluteWrite on-line forum. It looks to me very worthwhile. Lots of solid advice, including a spattering of useful laws, ala:
Watt-Evans’ Law: There is no idea so brilliant that a sufficiently ham-handed writer can’t make an unreadable story out of it.
Feist’s Corollary to Watt-Evans’ Law: There is no idea so stupid that a sufficiently talented writer can’t make a readable story out of it.
My only quibble with Uncle Jim (actually, I don’t know much about him — I may be older than he is, but I’ll call him Uncle anyway; I also answer to Auntie Ro) is his ten pages or about 2,500 words a day. That’s just not the way some people work. Me included. But he knows that; he starts out with a proviso that says, basically, what any honest teacher of writing must say (and I paraphrase): take what works for you and leave the rest.
You've stumbled across my official website and landed on the front page of my weblog.
The most useful law for very new writers is Jim’s own. Yog’s law: Money flows toward the writer.
Jim is Yog Sysop on sff.net, for reasons which escape me at the moment.
Wow…!
Just spent a good hour mesmerized in front of the computer, devouring the tips given by Uncle Jim. Thanks for the link, Sara!
C.