In the class I’m currently taking (and loving), there’s been a thread lamenting how hard it is to write fast enough for the current voracious market. Since the class is called Write Better Faster, that’s no surprise. (I highly recommend the class–it is about figuring out how your brain works so you can write and […]
I finished the rewrite on my novel last week and sent it off. And so what does a writer do next? Why, start the next novel, of course. But in my case, I am going back to a novel. Here’s the story. I have a full-length novel and a loooong novella languishing on my computer. […]
I’ve been working with one of my clients, who shall remain nameless (Hi, Mitch!) to trim down his long middle grade fantasy. Clocking in at over 140,000 words it is, as I said, long. Meanwhile, I recently set out to write a short story. Apparently, I have a hard time writing anything short. The story […]
I spent this just-past Thanksgiving weekend at the beach with a rotating cast of family members in attendance. It was a blast. And, I got some writing done. I woke up early every day and sat at the dining room table and wrote on my laptop. (It helped immeasurably that the house has no wi-fi.) […]
I finished draft two of my romance novel this past weekend. Woot woot! It still needs work so there was no dancing in the streets or swinging from chandeliers. Just a quiet sigh of pleasure. And there’s always a bit of confusion as I ponder, what do I do next? So I figured a blog post […]
Hi there. Yes, I know it is Friday and for the last couple of months I’ve consistently been cranking out Five on Friday posts, wherein I cheerily catch you up on what I’ve been doing all week and drop in a few brilliant helpful writing tidbits. And today I started out with the same intention […]
If you’re anything like me, the beginning of writing a book is a messy affair. You’ve taken notes like crazy, and they might be anywhere and everywhere. You’ve got nuggets about character buried deep inside a Moleskine, and the best ideas ever for a plot–if only you could find them. I’m all for this chaos […]
So, I’m four scenes away from finishing the most terrible Shitty First Draft ever, in the history of man, written. I started this novel on a sunny afternoon in Collioure last September when I got a sudden inspiration. I’ve been working steadily on it since then, taking pretty much the whole months of December and […]
Back in my early writing days, genre was a dirty word. “Oh, she writes genre romances,” someone would sniff. Or, “Well, you know, it’s just a genre mystery.” My, how things have changed. Though not everyone apparently approves or even wants to admit it, the lines between genres (or more to the point, between genre […]
And here's one final offering from the archives, back in September of 2012. Yeah, so, you want to write a novel. And you're even thinking of doing Nanowrimo this year. (Nanowrimo = National Novel Writing Month, just in case you don't know, and it's in November.) But then the voices begin: The dreaded blank page. The dreaded […]
