Anna Staniszewski

Archives: September2009

• WIP Update

  Where did September go? I’d been hoping to get a first draft of my WIP completed by the end of this month, but I still have a little ways to go. One thing I’ve been struggling with in the story is keeping all the logic straight. Since it involves people with supernatural abilities, I’ve been

• You Tell Me: What Makes a Fairy Tale Retelling Work?

  For the past couple of weeks I’ve had an idea for a fairy tale retelling bouncing around in my head. Since I have another story I’m working on now, I’ve decided to put the retelling off until November for NaNoWriMo. In the meantime, I want to read a few more fairy tale retellings and  to

• Defining Speculative Fiction

  Ever since I learned the term “speculative fiction” I’ve been a big fan of it, mostly because it implies the “what if?” question that is a staple of fiction writing (especially in science fiction and fantasy). I’ve generally heard this term used to describe science fiction, though in Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science

• Why Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Are Lucky

  Now that I’ve finished Take Joy, I’ve moved on to Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. I love Card’s fiction, and I find his insights on writing extremely inspiring. Even in the introduction to the book, he starts off with something that really makes me think:
  In many ways [the science fiction

• Getting to Know Your Landscape

  I finally finished Jane Yolen’s wonderful book Take Joy yesterday. It was so nice to meander through her ideas on writing and soak them in. One thing she talked about toward the end of the book was landscape and how all-too-often it’s an aspect of writing that gets neglected. “We are unpracticed in the art

• WIP Update

  It’s been a busy couple of weeks and I think my work-in-progress is a little miffed at me. I got stuck on it and didn’t do much writing for a few days, and then I had to put it aside to work on some revisions. I think it finally perked up when my writing group

• A Slice of Pie Night

  As I mentioned yesterday, last night was the Boston area’s first Kid Lit Pie Night. I was expecting it to be a pretty low-key affair, but we wound up absolutely packing the place! There was a wide range of people there: writers, editors, agents, illustrators, teachers, librarians, and general children’s book enthusiasts. I found myself

• Crawling Out of the Writer Cave

  The strange thing about reading authors’ blogs and following them on Twitter is that you start to feel like you know them, even when you’ve never met. For someone like me, who tends to be a little shy, it’s a great way to connect with other writers. But I discovered that getting to know people

• “Hooked” on a Good Beginning

  I started reading the craft book Hooked by Les Edgerton yesterday. It’s all about how to write the best beginning for your manuscript. What I like about the book is that even though it’s very focused on the start of the story, it helps you set up all the ingredients you’ll need to make the

• Some Fluffy Fun

  It’s been a bit of a busy week which means I don’t have much in the way of thoughtful insights on writing, or any terribly exciting WIP news. Instead, I’m going to share a video that I bet will make you smile. As I might have mentioned before, I’m a little bit obsessed with rabbits.