-
-
Join 509 other subscribers
-
Recent Posts
Other Blogs Of Interest
- Author Elizabeth Bear — Hugo winner and all-around cool person
- Geek Of All Trades — A “Geek’s Eye” view of life and all things geek. Home of the “Word of the Day.”
- idisagreecompletely — Susan Lewis, blogger, writer, and fellow NaNoWriMo’er
- Interactions in Real Time –Jo Rhett, author and member of my extended critique group family, discussing writing and technology.
- Marmalade, Cat Detctive — Follow Marmalade, star of an upcoming story by my friend Maaja Wentz
- Ninth Circle Press — Snarky T-shirts, buttons, mugs / musings on creativity and humor / flash fiction / snowclones.
- Second Hand Roses — The worst–and sometimes, the best–of thrift store and yard sale finds.
Category Archives: Writing
Writing Thursday: Why Not Take All Of Me; or, Reducing Wordiness
For the past few weeks, I’ve been a woman on a mission. I’ve been trying to reduce my work-in-progress, The Daughters Of August Winterbourne (Book I) down to 125,000 words. The first draft weighed in at around 185,000 words; the … Continue reading
Posted in Writing
Tagged craft, editing and revising, finishing what I started, goals, process
Leave a comment
Writing Thursday: Responding To A Prompt; or, I Commit An Act Of Short Fiction
A little something different this week: A friend of a friend, whose blog I follow, runs a monthly writing contest, where she throws out an orphaned first line and invites people to write either the first paragraph of a story … Continue reading
Writing Thursday: A Matter Of Some Delicacy; or, Getting Intimate With Your Characters
First off, my apologies for not getting this posted last night. For some reason, my netbook just didn’t want to talk to the network last night. It gets that way sometimes. This is an entry I’ve been saving up since … Continue reading
Writing Thursday: My “Eureka!” Moment; or, To Make A Long Story Short
I posted a couple of weeks ago that I had finished editing the first book of my “Daughters of August Winterbourne” series. Turns out I was wrong about that. See, something was still bothering me about the book, and that … Continue reading
Writing Thursday: Help Wanted; or, Would You Like To Read A Story?
My big news this week is that I’ve finally, finally finished my second draft of The Daughters Of August Winterbourne, Book 1. (And yes, I know I need a snazzier title than that. Working on it. Really.) So now I’ve … Continue reading
Writing Thursday: The Death-March Continues; or, Editing Progress
It really is starting to feel like a death-march, this manuscript edit I’ve been working on. Bits of the story have been fighting back, tooth-and-nail. The epilogue, in particular, was bad-tempered and unruly. And we won’t even talk about how … Continue reading
Writing Thursday: Learning and Unlearning; or, Old Habits Do What?
I’ve been deep into editing the first book of my Winterbourne series these past few weeks (as I–ahem–may have mentioned once or twice). But the other day, when I went to open my file, my mouse pointer slipped, and instead, … Continue reading
Writing Thursday: The Revision Grind; or, Advice From The Trenches
For those of you who are curious, yes, I am in fact still hard at work revising the first book in the Winterbourne series. I’m currently on page 211 out of 249, which means I’m … uh … roughly 85% … Continue reading
Writing Thursday: Gifts Writers Will Use; or, What Not To Get Me For Christmas
I found this list prior to the holidays, but declined to post it then because I didn’t want people to think I was fishing for gifts. I’m not. Really. But I found the article thought-provoking because the author was so … Continue reading
The Good vs. The Bad; or, Why Didn’t I Have A Creative Writing Teacher Like This?
Today, author James Van Pelt* posted a blog entry on good poetry vs. bad poetry over on his LiveJournal. You should go read it. In particular, his list of characteristics of good vs. bad poetry (in the photograph of the … Continue reading
News From The Editing Front; or, What I’ve Been Up To Lately
For those of you who have been wondering what sort of progress I’ve been making on my latest (unfinished) NaNoWriMo novel, I have a confession to make: I haven’t made any actual progress at all in the last two weeks. … Continue reading
T’is The Season; or, A Short Christmas Story
Once upon a time, a couple of years ago, when I was still blogging on “The Melt-Ink Pot” (the now-defunct group blog of which I was a part), we did a story prompt. The prompt was, “Late into the night, … Continue reading
Link Salad for November
Link Salad time again! I tossed together some good stuff for y’all this month: First, from my friend Kate’s blog: Stand Up To Your Creativity. Next, from NPR, some helpful advice on How To Name Your First Novel. For those … Continue reading
Research; or, The Devil Is In The Details
Ah, research. One of my favorite things about writing a historically-based story is the fact that so much of the world-building is already done for me. After all, if for some reason, I need to know what a pocket watch … Continue reading
NaNoWriMo 2011 Wrap-up
So the madness known as NaNoWriMo is over for another year. I’m kind of sad to see it end, just when I was getting into the swing of things: spending half an hour writing every day before work, blogging about … Continue reading
NaNoWriMo: Crossing The Finish Line
Well, I’ve done it. I’ve collected 30 NaNos (1 NaNo=1,667 words) to make one NaNoWriMo (50,000 words). In fact, it’s a little more than that, and I’ll probably add more to the final word count tonight and tomorrow. But for … Continue reading
NaNoWriMo Update, Week 4
Ahh, gliding into the home stretch. I’m at over 45,000 words now, so while I haven’t exactly blown anyone’s doors off with my writing speed this month, I’m still moving forward at a reasonable pace, and, barring any disasters, should … Continue reading
Naming Issues; or Why Did You Call Me That?
As usual, as I plow through NaNoWriMo, character names are proving to be somewhat problematic. For the most part, the new characters I’ve added so far have allowed themselves to be named without too much of a fuss. One entire … Continue reading
And Now The Ball Is Rolling; or, More NaNoWriMo Progress
I just realized, going back and looking at my NaNoWriMo update from last week, that I really didn’t provide much of an update at all. So I should probably remedy that! As of this morning, I was a few hundred … Continue reading
NaNoWriMo, Week 3
This past Tuesday, I finally summoned my courage and did something I’d been wanting to do since my first NaNoWriMo back in 2006. I attended a write-in. You know how it is, the first time you venture forth to take … Continue reading
CrazyWithKeyboard 