I know I promised I would start writing today and you could all hold me accountable. The thing is, my mom is having her hip replaced today, so I’m hanging out at the hospital. Prayers are welcome. But, the good news is, I’ve finished my “Before the Draft” steps and I already started drafting. Ok,…
writing
Before the Draft: Procrastination
When I started this series a few weeks ago, I thought I’d be much further along in the process by now. But then there was WriteOnCon and a contest for which I needed to critique others and my son started Kindergarten and … … and those are all excuses. The truth is, I hate drafting!…
Middle Grade Characters and Trust in Authority Figures
I don’t have an MMGM review today, although this post was inspired by a middle grade book–one I’m not going to name because it would lead to a bit of a spoiler. Here’s the situation: The main character places her trust in two adults who turn out to be the bad guys. Why did she…
Make Your Pitches Specific and Other WriteOnCon Takeaways
Another WriteOnCon is over, and once again I feel energized and ready to get back out there with my manuscript. It’s amazing to me how different the conference is from one year to the next. The organizers do a great job coming up with new topics and presenters. In case you missed it, here is…
How to Stalk WriteOnCon Ninja Agents
Please see my 2017 post, which is updated for the new forum platform. Note: I’ve postponed the MMGM I had planned for today due to being lost in the WriteOnCon forums. What’s that, you may ask? Read on. If you write for kids, teens or new adults, you should attend WriteOnCon tomorrow and Wednesday. It’s…
Before the Draft: Research
It’s always interesting to me to read about other writers’ processes for getting ready to draft. Ever since I participated in NaNoWriMo in 2011, I’m firmly in the fast draft camp. I don’t necessarily finish a draft in a month, but I have set word goals every day, and I don’t revise anything until I’ve…
Emails, Footnotes and Tweets: When Authors Experiment with Format
I’m always impressed when an author pulls off a unique format. I’ve read quite a few books lately that stray from the standard narrative format and thought I’d share. Maybe they will inspire you to try something new! The journal entry. The journal/diary entry is probably the most common detour I’ve seen from the expected…
The Power of a Well-Planned Twist
I’ve talked before about how much I love a good twist, and a book I read last week featured one that was so well done I wanted to give the author a slow clap. The few times I even entertained the thought that this twist might come, she cleverly misdirected me, the reader, so that…
What I’ve Learned in Two Years of Querying
I really hoped I wouldn’t have to write this post, but here we are. It’s officially been two years since I sent my first round of queries. During that time, I’ve queried two manuscripts, one of which underwent a major revision before restarting the querying process. I posted last year on what I’d learned in…
When Is It Time to Query?
I’ve written posts on when it’s time to revise and when it’s time to wait, but I started this blog after I’d started querying DUET, so I didn’t have a reason to write about when it’s time to query. Until now. Because even though I still have a few DUET submissions out there, it’s time…
Those Pesky Crutch Words …
I had this whole post written and WordPress deleted it–twice! Thank goodness I discovered you could retrieve a draft, although I’m still having to cut and paste it. Anyway, there’s a lot of advice out there telling you to eliminate words like: just very kind This rule is so ingrained, I don’t have an issue…
A Moment in THE DEXELON TWINCIDENT
Kip Wilson Rechea tagged me in a snippet-sharing blog hop. You can see the excerpt from her YA futuristic thriller, BRIGHTEST MIDNIGHT, here. Thanks, Kip! I’m going to share a snippet from my work-in-progress, THE DEXELON TWINCIDENT. The rules were: “Search for the words ‘moment,’ ‘forever,’ ‘time,’ or the like in your writing, pick your…
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