Improbable Press Blog

Do this: Ignore anyone who doesn’t like what you like. Ignore ‘em.Because there are seven billion people on this planet and about the only thing we’ll all agree on is the human need for food, water, and air. Beyond that it’s a crap shoot.This by way of saying that when it comes to fic tropes there will always be people who think they’re lame, over-used, lazy. Great! Let those folks go off and enjoy something edgy. You? Me? We can happily settle down with a beloved coffee shop fic, a college AU, or whatever the ever it is we love....

I've written more about Sherlock Holmes than the man who created him. Books, fan fiction, articles, essays; more than three quarter of a million words. The thing is, I almost stopped so many times. Because I write professionally, people pay me to write about flu jabs and saving for retirement but they didn't pay me to write hundreds of thousands of words of Sherlock fan fiction. So I tried quitting. Tried to focus on 'real' writing. Yet every time I turned in an article on feral cats or baby colic, I'd start another chapter on another fic, muttering I shouldn't...

A few writer friends and I took this personality test with ourselves in mind, which was fun, but then we took it for our most beloved original character and our most beloved fandom character. The results were a surprise we'll talk about in the next Spark newsletter.   Maybe toddle on over and put the particulars for your best-beloved in there — Sherlock Holmes or Leia Organa or the Doctor? — and see if the results inform your fic. Do they spark ideas? Reveal something you hadn't known like they definitely did for me? Talk to us below!

So this year I interviewed a couple fandom and book writers about acting. Or rather, acting out. Fic and fiction writers Verity Burns, Narrelle M Harris, and Jamie Ashbird talked briefly with me about how acting and reading their stories out makes their stories better. ATLIN MERRICK: So you three have written a lot of fic, as well as fiction for Improbable Press in our A Murmuring of Bees, and when I asked you after that about how you went about writing, all three of you surprised me in having a similar opinion on how pretending has helped you be...

On Actually Doing By Darcy Lindbergh “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” - Earl Nightingale I’ve probably read hundreds of articles about writing right now, about putting aside the fears and excuses and putting words on the page, and agreed wholeheartedly with them. And I’ve always considered myself a writer anyway; I’ve always had stories to tell and I’ve always tried to tell them. So I was completely blindsided to realize that my own fears and excuses were stopping me from writing something bigger....