#WritersCoffeeClub 11/1: Name a poet who has influenced you.

I am violently allergic to poetry and generally ignore it—nuanced exception: song lyrics. So … Gary Numan? Trevor Horn? Alanis Morisette?

#WritersCoffeeClub 10 How do you steer a reader’s emotional journey?

That sounds horribly manipulative to me, and not in a good way. It's not my job, I don't consciously try to do that.

#WritersCoffeeClub 9th Jan 2026. What's your top tip for writing authentic dialogue?

I don't even try.

Pick up a novel—any novel. (Not "Trainspotting", you freak.) Read the dialog aloud. Alternatively, record an ongoing pub or coffee shop conversation (consensually!) and transcribe it verbatim, including all the random throat clearing and interjections. Turns out that the cadence of written speech is NOTHING LIKE that of actual speech.

The job of dialog in fiction is to convey speechiness.

#WritersCoffeeClub 8: While editing, what most clearly signals a pacing issue?

A whole lot of things can be indicators: it all depends on context!

"The plot seems to run on rails for a long sequence" in one recent problem child WIP was the outcome of one of my characters being just too passive (that's going back for a major rewrite). "I don't understand why X did Y" often means the background/explanations leading up to it are rushed. And so on.

#WritersCoffeeClub Jan 7. Continuing from yesterday’s question, what’s gone downhill (with my writing process)?

I am older, sicker, and slower: 1000 words a day feels like a solid goal, the new 3000 words/day. And they take longer and are harder to put out, although in part that's because I'm doing more ambitious work nowadays.

#writerscoffeeclub 6 Process-wise, what’s improved for you over the years?

When I started selling short fic in the mid 1980s everything happened on paper, via snail mail, and photocopying was expensive. By the time I was selling books in the 00s I could talk to my agent by email … but manuscripts and proofs still had to go via international air mail.

Some time around 2010 it all flipped and now the main nuisance is publishers want Microsoft and Adobe files (see also: enshittification).

#WritersCoffeeClub 1/4: Share a tool of your trade.

Wikipedia. (Everyone else already said Scrivener.) A lot of my work requires a great deal of research. A lot more than people even begin to realize.
Wikipedia is basically my one-stop shop for finding it. Especially with the search engines turned to pure fucking worthless slop. The paper I'm looking for won't show up there, but somebody cited it as a source, so it's right there on Wikipedia.

#WritersCoffeeClub Jan 4: Share a tool of your trade.

It's a little keypad with en-dash, em-dash, degree, superscript 2, pi and multiplication symbols.

#WritersCoffeeClub 1/4: Share a tool of your trade.

Wikipedia. (Everyone else already said Scrivener.) A lot of my work requires a great deal of research. A lot more than people even begin to realize.
Wikipedia is basically my one-stop shop for finding it. Especially with the search engines turned to pure fucking worthless slop. The paper I'm looking for won't show up there, but somebody cited it as a source, so it's right there on Wikipedia.

#WritersCoffeeClub Jan 4: Share a tool of your trade.

It's a little keypad with en-dash, em-dash, degree, superscript 2, pi and multiplication symbols.

4. Share a tool of your trade.

Software: Scrivener and Obsidian. I (and others) have talked about Scrivener frequently, I wouldn't want to write without it, used it since 2010 aroundish.
Obsidian for the 'world bibles' I can throw everything in there, link the different files to each other, better than I could do in Scrivener, and also have a little database which is a newish feature, and I love it.
When I throw too many large image files into Scrivener, it takes too long to load and backup. There's the option of bookmarking (linking) the files, but I like Obsidian better for that kind of thing.
I also sometimes use a Parker gel pen.

#WritersCoffeeClub

#WritersCoffeeClub 1/4: Share a tool of your trade.

For writing books, it's @scrivenerapp —been using it since 2008 (it was still in beta at the time!) and have written about 25 books using it in that time. Many of which would have been impossible to produce without it. It's not a word processor (although it subsumes one), it's a tool for managing the deep structure of book-length compound text documents. Makes complexity transparent.