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    Writing Neep: Short Essays on the Writing Life
    Writing Neep: Short Essays on the Writing Life
    Writing Neep: Short Essays on the Writing Life
    Ebook60 pages44 minutes

    Writing Neep: Short Essays on the Writing Life

    By Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Fifteen essays by Sharon Lee on the business, craft, and personal sides of professional writing, collected from blog entries that first appeared at Sharon Lee, Writer and/or Eagles Over the Kennebec. Lee is the co-author of more than 20 novels; author of five. Her first novel, Agent of Change, was published in 1988 by Del Rey Books. The newest novel, Dragon in Exile, was published by Baen Books in June 2015.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSharon Lee
    Release dateJul 25, 2015
    ISBN9781935224969
    Writing Neep: Short Essays on the Writing Life
    Author

    Sharon Lee

    Sharon Lee has worked with children of various ages and backgrounds, including a preschool, a local city youth bureau, and both junior and senior high youth groups. She has a bachelor’s degree in sociology and also in psychology. Sharon cares about people and wildlife. She has been an advocate in the fight against human trafficking and a help to stray and feral animals in need.

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      Book preview

      Writing Neep - Sharon Lee

      Writing Neep:

      Short Essays on the Writing Life

      by Sharon Lee

      Author's Foreword

      In which Rolanni eats her vegetables

      ––––––––

      And a very pleasant good day to you, also.

      Introductions first.

      My name is Sharon Lee, and I'm a writer.  Rolanni is what was known as my handle back when the internet was the Wild, Wild West.  Yes, yes; I've had that screen-name for a long, long time. Occasionally, when in the Rolanni persona, I speak of myself in the third person.  It's a Thing.

      Now, the vegetables.

      If you're clever—and I know you are, clever—you will have already discovered that a neep is a British turnip.  Digging deeper, you will doubtless also have found that NEEP is the acronym for the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships, and in the form neep-neep is a term used in science fiction fandom to denote someone fatally fascinated by computers, though I never heard it used that way.

      Your search for enlightenment may have led you from neep to neepery.  If it did-or-has, I applaud you.  Neepery describes a situation in which someone—often a technician or a  specialist—is speaking insider jargon; the insider jargon itself being dignified through back-construction as neep.

      And so we come to writing neep.

      I am, as I said above, a writer.  As of today, I have written, with my delightful husband and co-author of many years, twenty novels of science fiction and fantasy, and dozens of short stories.  I've also written three novels off my own byline, and another handful of short stories.  The first novel I wrote with Steve, Agent of Change, was published in 1988; our next novel, Dragon Ship, will be published in the fall of 2012.

      It's been a long career, and a checkered one.  Most writers careers get checkered, if they stay at it long enough.  Call it an occupational hazard, and be warned.

      Long story short, in addition to writing novels, and stories, and newspaper articles, and reviews, and advertising copy, and just about anything else that people will pay me to write, I have, since March 2004, kept a blog on Live Journal called Eagles Over the Kennebec.  In March 2010, I decided that I really ought to have a professional web site, and so put together Sharon Lee, Writer, which includes The Blog Without a Name, the content of which is mirrored to Eagles. . .

      Though it began as a personal blog, and more than half of its content remains personal, from time to time I do talk about writing, and the writing life in the pages of Eagles, because, well. . .I am a writer, a condition that constantly impinges on my life.

      So then, gathered herein are fifteen writing-related entries from The Blog Without a Name and/or Eagles Over the Kennebec.  Some of posts deal with the business of writing, some with the personal challenges that come with the carefree life of a freelance writer.  Two of the following essays, amusingly, deal with the influences of televised espionage on my writing career.

      Since the essays were written as blog entries, some of them ask questions of the reader.  You might want to consider them in the light of Points of Ponder.  Or not.  What you do and what you learn—or fail to learn—from the essays depends entirely upon you.  For my part, I hope you're at least amused, and perhaps informed.

      Whatever you do, have fun.

      Sharon Lee

      Waterville Maine

      August 2012

      On Writing What You Know OR How David Bryne Made Me a Writer

      One of the most basic pieces of writing advice—so basic that it's handed out wholesale to roomfuls of high school English classes like day-old toll house cookies—is write what you know.

      Whether or not this is good advice

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