Welcome to OUT OF CHARACTER, a newsletter on writing, craft, and what inspires us to create
Welcome to OUT OF CHARACTER, a weekly newsletter about writing, craft, and what inspires us to create.
By night, I'm an aspiring SF&F author; by day, I'm an editor, transcriptionist, and pseudonymous self-publishing romance author based in Montreal. I spend most of my time developing my skills as a writer and editor, reading across genres, nonfiction, and absorbing media in other forms, like movies, video games, and podcasts.
I started this newsletter to create a record of how my craft develops and flex my writing chops diversely, while also hopefully serving as a resource for beginning writers who aren’t sure where to start—or at least offering entertainment to people who are just interested in watching someone else’s process unfold.
OUT OF CHARACTER will be published each Monday as follows:
1st Monday of the Month: A link roundup of what I consumed last month: books, articles, podcasts, other media. This post will also cover what I produced last month, including updates on my wordcounts and how my projects are going; new things I tried this month; and what got in my way. These posts will also include a monthly playlist organized around a theme; music is a big part of my creative consciousness, and this is a project that I’m really excited about.
2nd and 4th Mondays of the Month: Essays on craft, from writing to editing. Often this will take the form of advice-like columns on subjects like on grammar, structure, style, and meta approaches to craft. Subjects may include: When to use repetitious dialogue tags for stylistic effect; Hyphenation; Present vs. Past tense; Outlining; and so on.
3rd Monday of the Month: A review post, either of books, movies, video games, or other. This may be in the form of an overall review, a scene review, or an essay-style reflection with a piece of media at its centre. The intent is to enforce my regular, analytical reflection on media and study how what we consume impacts us as creatives.
Some months have five Mondays! My intention for this surplus Monday is to use it for personal and/or nonfiction essays—a bit of a grab bag segment to flex long-neglected chops.
This newsletter will launch on Monday, August 3, 2020. Thank you so much for reading! The archives will remain free until I’m important enough to lock them down.
Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue. In the meantime, tell your friends!
Be courageous,
Leighton