Yesterday a missionary visited our church. I haven’t been able to shake his message for a number of reasons, and many of those are related to how he touched my heart in relation to my personal faith in Jesus, but bear with me because I am going to relate this to writing, too. I’ve heard…
writing
The Manuscript That Won’t Let You Go
Do you have a manuscript that won’t let you go? It seems that every writer I talk to has one, and I’m no exception. Mine is a manuscript I shelved after querying quite successfully–well, as successfully as querying can be without an offer. It garnered a lot of interest, all the way up to an…
Pushing Through to the End of My Draft
Hi everyone! I was a neglectful blogger last week. It was Christmas show week, which is a crazy time in my house. My husband and I both play in our church orchestra, and my son was also in the children’s choir this year. Between the three of us, someone had rehearsals Sunday through Wednesday, and…
How Do You Pull Off A Successful Unreliable Narrator?
I just finished reading a certain best-selling book that included an unreliable narrator, and it got me to thinking about how you pull one of these off. It’s no easy task. I tried it. Unsuccessfully. I ended up rewriting the manuscript a different way, and as much as I liked the idea of the unreliable…
The Wonderful World of … Drafting?
It’s been a looong time since I posted about drafting. Let me check … yep, part 3 of my It’s Just a First Draft series posted on Nov. 6, 2013, so just over a year. It feels like much longer ago that I was drafting CATCH HIM BY DISGUISE, probably because I really took my…
YA Review & Interview: FORBIDDEN by Kimberley Griffiths Little
Today I’m thrilled to feature an interview with Kimberley Griffiths Little for her new young adult historical, FORBIDDEN, which takes readers much further into history than the typical historical novel. Take a look at this gorgeous trailer for a glimpse. Kimberley graciously answered questions for me about the five things I loved best. 1. When…
Capturing the Details
Yesterday my four-year-old daughter discovered my old digital camera sitting on my desk and asked if she could have it. Since we’ve replaced it with a newer camera and our son already has a camera, I said, “Sure.” She immediately went off and started snapping pictures. What caught my attention wasn’t the fact that she…
WriteOnCon! With Advice If You’re Posting in the Forums
It’s WriteOnCon time! WriteOnCon is a free, online conference for picture book, middle grade, young adult, and (this year) new adult writers. If you fit into any (or all!) of these categories, you should definitely check it out! The information I’ve gleaned from this conference over the past few years is beyond measurement. One of…
Revision: Killing Those Darlings
If you’ve been following my journey through revisions for my work-in-progress, you may remember that in my last round of revisions I was still getting rid of a number of dangling threads from an early plot thread I’d eliminated. When I received comments back from this round of readers, I was pleased to discover that–finally!–I…
Thoughts on Revising from Public Critiques
Two weeks ago I was privileged to participate in #BLOGPITCH, a blog hop hosted by Authoress for the purpose of gathering critiques for my Twitter pitch and first 250 words. First of all, I want to say how much I appreciate everyone who stopped by to comment on my post. I really appreciated the critiques….
What I’ve Learned in Three Years of Querying
Today marks three years since I seriously started querying my work. As a frame of reference, I’ve queried three manuscripts during that time. All of them started out middle grade, but one of them I aged up to young adult after a revise and resubmit request from an agent. I’m currently getting a fourth manuscript…
A BOY COULD #BLOGPITCH Logline and First 250 Words
Last week I participated in a Twitter pitch contest through the popular Miss Snark’s First Victim blog (http://www.misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/) and was selected as one of ten blogs to participate in a blog hop to receive critiques on the first 25o words of my manuscript. It’s a win for me because I’m at the perfect stage to…
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