Most writing advice is situational & context sensitive, and online spaces love bon mots & are allergic to context. So, easy to tie yourself in knots!

On my mind today: "if it bores you, it will bore the reader" Many readers cruise at around a minute a page. I don't know many writers who write faster than an HOUR a page, whether that hour's spent in one draft or split over several.

So you've decided to work from home for an extended period. Good for you!

I've been a full time freelancer for eight years. I have some tips which may be useful.

I don't *study* working from home or anything. I just *do* it. So think of this as a practitioner's ramble. Your habits will be skewed for the first couple weeks. We organize our behavior by patterns, checkpoints. Context. Changes in light.

Working from home will confuse you more than you think. Be ready for that!

Thinking about Solnit's PARADISE BUILT IN HELL in the last few days. I'm no expert, but some takeaways from that book:

* "Mass hysteria" doesn't seem to happen in disaster situations
* People come together with their neighbors and help out
* Elite panic gets people killed Governments feel like they're out of control, mobilize armies to 'keep order' (=protect property rather than human lives). "Militia" / gun stockpilers think This Is It, Mad Max Time and go hunting for "looters." And so it goes.

Oh my god, the Scribner paperback of Gatsby contains ~Maxwell Perkins' edit letter to Fitzgerald~ "I think you are right in feeling a certain slight sagging in chapters six and seven, and I don't know how to suggest a remedy. I hardly doubt that you will find one and I am only writing to say that I think it does need something to hold up here to the pace set and ensuing."

Great thread. When scenes feel static and repetitive I return to a few core principles:
1. What's the conflict?
2. Encode that conflict in a physical element of the scene characters can interact with.
3. Don't use food or drink unless it's important.

https://twitter.com/kbwagers/status/1108361501994176512

'Conflict' doesn't mean fight, obviously. Example of (2):
Tina is getting ready to leave for a business trip, but Alex is trying to work her way up to a confession of love. Tina's packing the suitcase, Alex is dancing around her trying to continue their conversation.

Re: LRT, it's worth discussing some of the hurdles former GMs encounter when trying to write long-form fiction! Let's see if I can get this done in fewer than fifteen tweets, y'all

I was fortunate enough to be in this position until writers I like started writing JP takedowns.

https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1022258028639182848

I have tried to avoid discussing these articles with my friends and spouse, real living loving phenomenal successful driven humans who have no idea this brand exists.

I'd forgotten just how sharp and political the first season of the new Dr Who was. Villains, by episode, so far:
E1: Plastic people of the universe.

Love this thought. Especially since so much of post-Tolkien fantasy, especially commercial fantasy, strongly misreads Tolkien imo...

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Just for example (and stealing this point from a good friend here), Tolkien tends to get used as a shorthand for "it all turns out all right, destiny is fulfilled, good guys win, and suffering is minimal"

It's that special type of day I never saw in Boston before two years ago, where the temperature spikes forty degrees and the snowdrifts steam. I'm thinking about global warming and what better place to do it than on Twitter on Friday during Eastern Time commutes when nobody's watching?