Seven years ago I set out to get serious about my writing. My dream to tell stories, construct beautiful sentences, and write entire books became a passion. I wanted to be a better writer without stopping life to get an MFA. So, I hit the library for books on writing. I listened to Bird by Bird ...
When finished the second draft of my novel, The Perfect Traveler, I had a sludge of slow cooked emotions in my pot. Relief, pride, discouragement, frustration, embarrassment, achievement….never has the classic writing advice to, “put it away in a drawer for awhile and forget about ...
This weekend marked an enormous milestone for me: I completed the first working draft of my novel. I did not celebrate. In fact, I cried. Here’s why. I’ve been working on this story for a year now and finished the first structural draft last fall. It had a different working title ...
I’ve got a scene by scene plan for all of Act 1 and now I have a decision to make. Should I continue plotting acts 2 and 3 now? Or, is it better to write the draft for all of Act 1 and then plot the remaining acts? It feels like I’m hiking and just came upon a fork. One way ahead is ...
5 scenes in I can already tell a spreadsheet scene plan is going to be a powerful tool for me to use. I think I got the idea from Novel Writing for Dummies, though I’m not positive; I’ve got several help-books going at once. By using my 3 act summary in Scrivner and character list, ...
“You must be prepared to work always without applause.” -Ernest Hemingway
