Author Archives: gideonpsmith

Guest Post: On Physics and Emergency Survival in Cold Environments for Dan Koboldt’s Fact in Fantasy

For those of you that enjoyed my recent guest blog post on Dan Koboldt’s long running Science in SciFi/Fact in Fantasy blog series on worldbuilding cold environments, I have a followup out on emergency survival in these situations. It’s based on my training in Antarctica. This second installment just posted to Dan’s website: Dan isContinue reading “Guest Post: On Physics and Emergency Survival in Cold Environments for Dan Koboldt’s Fact in Fantasy”

Guest Post: On Worldbuilding Cold Environments for Dan Koboldt’s Fact in Fantasy

So the recent daily blog experiment ended, but I have not been doing nothing – I was fortunate enough to be invited to do another guest blog post on Dan Koboldt’s long running Science in SciFi/Fact in Fantasy blog series. This one is on cold environments. It’s based on my experience working in Antarctica andContinue reading “Guest Post: On Worldbuilding Cold Environments for Dan Koboldt’s Fact in Fantasy”

Writing Choices: Quality vs Quantity

If you follow my blog you will know that on 5/1/23 I decided to try an experiment. I wanted to see if, by writing a blog entry every day, I could create a ‘writing habit’. It was intended as a 21 day straight series, but I have decided to end it early. Why? So inContinue reading “Writing Choices: Quality vs Quantity”

Generating Durable Short Story Ideas

I know that for some it starts with a character. Stephen King, when writing novels, puts characters in situations and sees how they evolve. I don’t know if he does short stories that way, but I imagine some people do. For me, it usually starts with an idea or a question, or a destination (ending).Continue reading “Generating Durable Short Story Ideas”

Getting the Most out of Books on Writing

I recently splurged on books, specifically books about the craft of writing. Excited by my new purchases, and already two chapters deep into one of them, and thoroughly enjoying it, I gushed to one of my writer friends. I was a little surprised to hear from them therefore that they too had read this self-sameContinue reading “Getting the Most out of Books on Writing”

Futurescapes: Workshopping the first 3000 Words

So on 5/2/23 I made a blog entry about the Futurescapes application and lead up to that workshop. Today I thought I would round out that with a post about my experience with the actual workshop. As a reminder I did the SFF 3000 word novel workshop. There are also KidLit, Horror, and longer 100Continue reading “Futurescapes: Workshopping the first 3000 Words”

Dream Agents, Editors, or Publishers

I think many of us would be lying if we did not say we had an idea of how we might want our writing career to go. I don’t just mean Hugo’s and Nebulas, though, why not? I mean down to what publisher you think matches you as your favorite author publishes with them, orContinue reading “Dream Agents, Editors, or Publishers”

Futurescapes: Application and Pre-workshop

So in March this year I did the futurescapes writing workshop. Before I did it I had searched blogs for people’s experiences and I thought, given it had been of interest to me to get different people’s takes, I would write about my experience with it. Now futurescapes does a number of different workshops, soContinue reading “Futurescapes: Application and Pre-workshop”

Developing a Writing Habit: Experiment – Increasing My Writing Output

When I started learning violin I found that it was hard to establish a practice habit, and without that, it was hard to make progress in my playing. In order to overcome that I made it a ‘rule’ that I did not have to practice violin 30 minutes or 60 minutes or 2 hours, orContinue reading “Developing a Writing Habit: Experiment – Increasing My Writing Output”