Andrew Jack Writing

Andrew Jack's Writing Blog

One, Two… Thirty?

I’m not sure if this is going to help you, but it sure helped me. I’m good at the first two chapters of an story I write, typically I can give you a couple of mouth watering (or stomach churning) chapters within a day or two. Sadly it’s all down hill from there. I get [...]

New Media Ninja; or, why JC Hutchins is the man

JC Hutchins’ book 7th Son: Descent is out. This makes me happy. Not just because it’s good (it’s superb), not just because he’s got a damn snazzy website (although it is pretty damn snazzy), but because any new author trying to make it in the business should take a look at JC Hutchins’ way of [...]

A Really Short Update and A Quick Tip

I’m running it close to the wire here. Four days to go and I’ve still got 10,000 words to hit my target of 50,000 in one month. Even to reach this I’ve had to count everything I;ve written this month, including the words I’ve deleted. It still counts. Quick Tip: Stuck for story idas? Look [...]

NanoWriMo and Your Future Self

I’d like you to fast forward yourselves to the end of November. You, sweaty and stained as if you’ve just emerged from a coal mine, are stared at a pile of printed paper. You choke back some tears and wonder about having another coffee. You silently curse and praise NanoWrimo at the same time. You’re [...]

Review Of Phil Rossi’s Crescent

I’ve just finished reviewing Phil Rossi’s awesome novel Crescent. If excellent sci-fi with a horror twist tickles your taste buds then check out the review right here.

Time: Finding it, Making it and Burnout

I just finished an essay that was due last week. I’m not proud. I packed so much into an already overloaded schedule that my synapses just plain cooked themselves into a nutritious (for zombies anyway) grey goo. It felt a lot like porridge sloshing around inside my skull. I knew the particular essay was due, [...]

Update, and a quick word about suffering

I’m a little behind. Right now I’m sitting right on 22,000 words for the month. I’m planning a fairly epic writing day tomorrow to catch up to my target and then keep on going. In that 22,000 I’m counting almost 16,000 words that I wrote…. and then deleted because they were in fact, very bad. [...]

The Down Times

Serial Agent Pimp Nathan Bransford (I love coming up with titles for people, it’s going to get me in trouble sooner or later) has finished the mammoth task of reading 2,500 plus entries and come up with a short list of ten finalists. I’m not one of them. I’m not bitter about this at all, [...]

Bam Crash Pow

Does your story need violence to make it interesting? Maybe. I wish the answer was no, I’ve experienced enough real violence to tell you for sure that it isn’t fun in the least*, but when it comes to stories one of the things readers really respond to is violence. It doesn’t need to be physical [...]

The First Paragraph

How do you start a book? I’ve been thinking a lot about this question since ninja agent/blogger Nathan Bransford began running his “The 3rd Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge”. I put in the first paragraph of my work in progress and forgot about it for a day or so. When I went back there [...]

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