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Sarah’s 20th Check-In
I started ‘A Magpie Mind’ nine months ago, and I still haven’t finished. To be fair, I started a re-write about halfway through, but still… I wrote ‘The Old Creek Bridge’ in less than four months. So...
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Just the Tip of the Iceberg: Character Building
Hi everyone! As the analogy I used in my last list post seemed to make sense to everyone, I’ll be using it again here, in a craft post on character building. First of all, it’s crucial to think of...
View ArticleA Weekend Update from Alyssa
Hey look, it’s Saturday! If you’re following our schedule, you may have noticed that I failed to post on Wednesday (whoops!), so I’m making up for it today. I trained for a new job all last week and...
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Writing Craft: 5 Steps To Unlock Reluctant Characters
Sometimes a character drop-kicks the door to your brain, cartwheels in and presents you with his own personal journal detailing every secret, hope, dream and description you could desire. But more...
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Craft: 3 Tips for Your Novel Journal
At a talk with David Almond a few months ago, he pulled out his novel journals and flipped through, showing us his crazy notes. Immediately I put a Moleskin journal on my Christmas list, which (spoiler...
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Writing What You Know
A lot of people get up in arms when someone tells them to ‘write what you know’, some of them for good reason. I’m going to argue in favor of – sometimes – writing what you know, but for a specific...
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Travel Tuesday: Worksheet Resources
Hey all! We’re now four days into NaNoWriMo 2014, and, if you’re anything like me, you’ve spent that initial burst of energy and things are starting to slow down. You’re maybe getting tripped up by...
View ArticleWriting Wednesday – Structuring your novel
Hi everyone! A lot of you may have spent this month feverishly writing a 50K novel in 30 days. As the end of NaNoWriMo is near, I thought today could be a good time to share a few tips on how to...
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Travel Tuesday: Locating Your Novel
Choosing where to set your (non-other-worldly) novel is complicated. Sometimes it’s easy to make a decision, like when your story more or less makes it for you – a small town girl meets the big city...
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Writing Wednesday: Getting Organized
Planning (and writing) a novel is messy work for most of us. Ideas don’t come in a pretty, streamlined package. Outlines don’t create themselves. Keeping it all straight can be difficult. Every writer...
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