There’s an idea out there that, to be a real writer, you have to publish X books in Y time. Putting a book out in a month does not mean we are now Real Authors… it just means we spent a month on it. Nothing more. Maybe I’m lucky and I manage to do that.…
At some point I always hit a block. The story doesn’t want to flow like it should, and I’m fighting plot holes, and all I want it to be anymore is done. I just want it out there so that The Dream can be real at last. No, it’s not done yet. I am. Time…
I’m not a very… trusting person. If I see that someone is trying to sell a program or a course, warning bells immediately go off in my head. When they promise easy answers, I don’t even bother looking at the price. I already know it’s a scam. So do I think that they are all…
So with my topic set, now I look to genre. Why wouldn’t I start with genre though? Isn’t it kind of important? Well, let me ask you: what comes to mind when I say “romance book”? A story about how person X met person Y and they faced challenge Z on the path to finding…
Every day, so many of us start our novels… or, in my case, restart them. A tiny, tiny percentage of aspiring authors will actually publish. Why is that? Is it because we don’t know how to make for words go on paper good? Of course not. Maybe it’s because we can’t plan our way out…
Yay! So it’s time to write that book! But … about what? Before we even start thinking about setting or characters, or even genre, let’s take a step back and think about what we actually want to talk about for the next few hundred pages. It’s got to be something we care about to keep…
To hold back on the urge to jump into the pants pool, or to live-test plotting problems, I will let my characters write me letters. There is always a quiet corner of a scene, even a finale, where a character could observe from. They can tell me what they see, how they feel, and often…
I shall not deadline. This sounds dangerous. I mean, I specifically wanted to not fall into a plotting hole for so long that I had to change my address. So, what gives? Well, I also know that when said deadline comes around, I will convince myself that I have actually met it and I Am…
There seems to be two main schools of thought: to pants, or not to pants. Or, for those of us who haven’t yet drowned ourselves in author subculture: do you write your story on the fly, or do you plot everything out first? (Hey, a pants pun.) I adore the idea of working on the fly. It…
Plotting. Some people hate it. I’d build a cottage and live there if I could. Often I’m accused of liking to plot more than I like writing the story itself. They’re probably not wrong. But … why? Isn’t that the boring part? It can be. For me, plotting is working with fun, beautiful little ideas.…
