Deanna Hoak

I had an incredibly useful writing chat with a month or so ago, in the midst of chatting about something else, and I found the talk so worthwhile that I saved it–and keep looking at it and looking at it. Finally, because I thought that maybe it would help someone else, too, I asked if [...]

If you haven’t already, you should go read ’s post about getting back into your creative writing groove. She’s smart and sweet and talented and has incredibly useful things to say.

I got a rejection yesterday that I’m really happy about! Sheila Williams said of my story “Mutual Feelings”: “This story was interesting, but it isn’t right for Asimov’s.”
It’s an erotic and disturbing science fiction story centered around the problems caused by a futuristic sex toy. I honestly didn’t think it would be right for Asimov’s, [...]

I realized when I attempted to start that “Style Sheet Meme” that a lot of people don’t know what a style sheet is. I’ll talk about them today.
A style sheet is a document the copyeditor prepares that lists the grammatical conventions, characters, places, unusual or made-up words, and the distinctive treatment of words (capitalization, hyphenation, [...]

I’ve had to write two letters of complaint in the last two days, which hasn’t been fun. I then opened up a file to start writing the post on style sheets I’ve been promising everyone, but I decided to start a new story instead. This is the beginning:
God, he was a lousy fuck. No foreplay, [...]

Okay. So has declared International Embarrass Yourself as an Artist Day. We’re supposed to post the grottiest, oldest, worst piece of juvenilia we have.
Now, I suppose I could have typed in the one with the wise disappearing unicorn and the talking balloons, but lucky you, you get the philosophical angst of a sixteen-year-old Deanna.
JUNK [...]

I think I’ve asked you this before, but do you like to see an author provide their own style sheet with lists of odd words/usages/explanations?
This sounds as though it would be really helpful, but on the few (two) occasions where I’ve had an author provide a style sheet, it actually wasn’t helpful to me at [...]

Sorry for the delay in responding to comments. I’ve been a busy girl! I’m going to pull some of the questions posed in comments to my last post up top to respond to them, though, for the benefit of those reading through a blog aggregator.
Are there preferred margins for copyediting? What about lines per page?
Standard [...]

I noticed from Toby Buckell’s blog that people are posting pictures of their workspaces, and I thought I’d join in.
My workspace is in the “eat-in” area of my kitchen. I like the location because I can see most of the house from here, and I have a gorgeous view of the backyard. (The backyard sold [...]

I’ve talked fondly before about my own contribution to Atlanta Nights, the wonderful, hilarious sting SFWA perpetrated on Publish America.
Now, you can own your very own, one-of-a-kind Atlanta Nights hardcover edition! The only one in existence! From the site:
To match the astonishingly bad quality of the prose, the Evilrooster Bindery has created this abysmal hardcover [...]