Y'load Sixteen Letters and Whaddya Get?

On the subject of making your words work, some interesting stuff from Elizabeth Bear (recent Hugo winner).

I have a book review to write and things to say about writing, mostly related to the fact that I'm in one of those states where I know I have to be writing what I'm writing but I want to be writing something else but I don't know what that is or I'd just do it ... anyway, the thing is that if you just keep writing what you have to be writing, eventually the "have to be" kind of fades out and you start enjoying it. At least, I do.

I'll worry about how much work my words are doing later. I'm reading "Smilla's Sense of Snow," which is at the same time a mystery and a really dense, literate book full of images and metaphors and characters and it's great and it's daunting because my story contains none of that.

Yet.