I finished Servant of a Dark God by John Brown the other day, and I thought it was a pretty good epic fantasy. It is the first in a series of books (as is the unspoken requirement for “epic fantasy”), but it was still very self-contained. Ie. the book had a satisfactory ending, and I didn’t feel like I was being coerced into rushing out to get the next book. (Don’t get me wrong, there were many questions left unanswered, but answering them would begin a new story. (753 words.)

I was about to write in my medieval fantasy story about a character entering a dark room and lighting a candle he found on a table. Then I thought, hey, how exactly would one have done that before the invention of matches? Apparently you would have used a tinderbox. But I couldn’t figure out from the descriptions and pictures how all the pieces of a tinderbox actually worked together, so I watched this YouTube video. (123 words.)

For some years now, I have spent roughly the last hour of my day before sleep reading. I now realize this was a gigantic mistake, and I don’t recommend any writers do this. Why? Because now when I try to read at any other time of the day, it makes me incredibly sleepy. I have accidentally trained my brain to associate reading with going to sleep. This is an awesome trick if you have trouble sleeping, but it’s not cool at all when you are trying to read more during the day. (102 words.)

I’ve been listening to the Writing Excuses podcast lately (which is excellent imo), and Brandon Sanderson often refers to his own works as examples of the points he’s making, so I thought I’d read some of his stuff. First up is Mistborn. I’m reading this book “critically,” as opposed to reading for pleasure, so I’m making notes along the way about what I think works and what doesn’t. (I think a big part of learning to be an author is learning one’s writing preferences, which might sound silly, but one doesn’t always know what one likes writing when you start. (975 words.)

I like to keep both of my fans informed of my work, so here’s what I’m doing. This month I have been working on revising my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel, and it hasn’t been going very well. I finished close to half of a second draft, wherein I rewrote a lot from scratch, but I had to stop when I sensed a rather major flaw. I like the characters and I particularly like the character relationships, but there is unfortunately a startling lack of plot around them. (298 words.)

I’m suffering from a major case of post-nanowrimo depression right now, which I would assume is pretty similar to post-partum depression. Or drug withdrawals. It’s pretty simple really. The act of creation is so thrilling and stimulating and awesome that when it’s over, there’s nothing left inside but a black empty void of nothingness. For me, it generally manifests as a fervent desire to stare at the walls and feel useless all day. (196 words.)

I just finished Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, which I read because it was supposed to be an example of the “fantasy steampunk” genre, although it turned out to be more in the “Lovecraftian horror” genre. Mieville’s writing is incredibly detailed and imaginative, and he’s pretty creative with his vocabulary, too. In other words, I was using the Kindle’s dictionary feature quite a lot. It wasn’t quite pretentious, but it seemed a tad unnecessary at times. (195 words.)

What is the backstory of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? Why is his name the same as my name? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Jingleheimer_Schmidt (19 words.)

It’s odd that so many web sites discussing literary archetypes use the characters from the movie Star Wars as their examples. Aren’t there ANY other movies that have classic archetypes? Or is Star Wars such a cultural touchstone that literally everyone on the planet recognizes it? (46 words.)