When I started writing my “first official novel”, I had a full time job that took up most of my day. I spent more time daydreaming about this novel than I actually spent writing it, and when I did write it, it was for thirty minutes here and there before I went to bed. It took me nine months to complete that first draft and the inconsistencies were hilarious. My main character’s mom had three different names and eye colors seemingly changed quicker than the Horse of a Different Color.* And those were the easy fixes. Now that I have…
Category: writing
2017 Writer Goals
It seems like just yesterday I was writing my goals blog post for 2016. I was lucky last year and managed to achieve all of them. 2016 was a great year for my writing and I hope to be as lucky this year, too! Of course, the thing about setting goals is that luck only plays a little into it. The rest is massively hard work. I’m going into my third year of being a full time writer, and as always, my biggest goal is to stay self-employed as a writer. See below for how I hope to accomplish that….
How to Wait
I once read an article that estimated that humans spend one third of their lives waiting. Waiting in line, waiting in traffic, waiting for service, etc. If you’re a writer, you wait longer than that. You wait in the query trenches, you wait in the submission trenches, you wait for your book to be published. You wait for ideas to come to you and you wait for plot holes to work themselves out. So how do you get through the waiting without letting it drive you crazy? I’ve made a handy list. How to Wait Know before you go into…
Inspiration Collages and Writing
Collage of inspiration photos for The Breakup Support Group As the days are slowly passing until the release of my next book, The Breakup Support Group, I thought I’d share my inspiration collage for it. I used to make inspiration boards after I’d written a book, as a way for the reader to see some images that relate to the book as I imagined it in my head. When I was plotting The Breakup Support Group, I made an inspiration board before I started writing. It ended up being really fun to look back on the pictures while I worked on…
How I outline a novel
Admittedly, I started out as a pantser, (one who writes by the seat of their pants, with no regards to outline or planning) but that was many years ago, and I am now firmly an outliner. Some authors argue that outlining a novel strips creativity away and leaves no room for making up some magic along the way. To that I say: writing a book is really freaking hard even if you’ve previously decided what happens in each chapter and trust me, there’s 70+ thousands of words for you to add some magic during the process. Okay, let’s begin. I follow…
The magic of your first book
[The first draft notes of my first ever novel.] As I began working on a new WIP this weekend, I felt the crushing weight of all the stress and work this WIP drags along behind it. It’s a story idea I’ve had simmering in the back of my mind for about five years, and I never took the time to write it because it scares me. Why? Because it has the potential to be awesome. And I’ve just never felt good enough to write it. (Case in point: A “good enough” writer wouldn’t use trite words like “good enough” to…
On Writing and Publishing
Recently, my writer/vlogger friend Avianne was asking me questions about writing & publishing, and since they were pretty great questions, I got her permission to use them for a blog post. Check out her lovely blog here: http://www.xoavianne.com and I’d like to thank her for letting me ramble on about myself, seeing as that’s one of my favorite things to do. 😉 Onto the questions! What does a average day consist of for you? I’ve been a full time writer for 1 year and 6 months. (And yes, I’m counting! It was the greatest job transition of my life.) The absolute best…
