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Hey guys!

The holidays have ended and school has started and it’s time to get back to work!  (But it’s like… writing.  Fun work. This’ll be grand.)

So, to start things off, swing over to the accountability forum and share some goals.  (Then I can come around weekly and bug you about them.)  (Also, you’ll get more writing/reading/whateveryourgoalsareabouting done.)

Then stick around here for some book talk.  Did y’all read anything great over Christmas break?  What did you learn about writing from you holiday reads?

I read Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward the week of Christmas and boy… what a ride.  If you want funny and exciting and starfighter pilots, hit up your local Barnes and Noble now because… yeah it was fun.  The coolest part of Skyward was the way Sanderson raised the stakes slowly throughout the book by changing character perception instead of actually raising the stakes.  For example, the main character wants to join the DDF (the starfighter military people) and at the beginning of the book, it’s a given that starfighters sometimes die fighting.  Later though, the stakes (or at least the character’s perception of the stakes) are raised when she realizes that starfighers she cares about might die.  Technically, the stakes are the same, but personally for the character, they are much higher.

Anyway, I really liked how Sanderson kept turning up the heat and the inner turmoil until he’d taken a really confident character and completely broken her apart.  If you want a good book to look at for stake raising and character crushing, Skyward is what you need.

What about y’all?  Any great holiday reads?

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