Writer
I’ve always been a night owl. 10pm rolls around and suddenly I’m full of ideas and a burning desire to start projects and be creative. This is especially true for my writing, since the late evening is generally the only part of my day that offers any quiet or solitude. The drawback to this is that when I’m really on …
Tomorrow is August 26th, which will mark exactly two months from the day I finished my second draft of Chaos. Instead of diving right into draft 3, as I intended, I had a number of non-writing-related projects fall into my lap over the summer. While I’m not usually happy about having very little time to write, I think it may work …
And… done. My second draft of Chaos is complete at 163,020 words. This is actually the first time I’ve had a complete, consecutive manuscript with no holes and nothing missing–everything would make sense read front to back. My husband was thrilled. This was the birthday present he’d specifically asked for, and I managed it 2 days early. My kids did a little …
Ooh, gettin’ closer! Plowing through the last few scenes, trying to get this all wrapped up by Friday. It’s starting to look like I’m going to land somewhere around 165k rather than my previously estimated 170k. ~ RM
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my novel meter has moved. I think I might be able to make my June 28th deadline for Draft 2, at which point it will be time to come back around and start cutting this monster down to a manageable size. ~ RM
That is one hefty stack of paper. I’ve heard some writers say they prefer editing a hard copy of their manuscript, so on a whim I thought I’d give it a try. Wow, did I underestimate what that would entail. After blowing through one brand new ink cartridge on my printer, and draining most of a second, I chickened out …
Every once in a while, reading a book/blog/other article on writing, I’ll come across an exercise where the author encourages readers to list their fears regarding writing. I’ve never paid much attention to these, because they sound suspiciously like fluffy psycho-babble pep-talks, having nothing to really do with writing, which is what I’m interested in. To be fair, I’m sure …
This is a post about writing, I promise. Since I write fantasy, I know a lot about killing tension. Fantasy and other spec-fic writers have a ton of information and backstory to convey, and more often than not this results in the story coming to a screeching halt. Epic fantasy, in particular, tends toward long, drawn-out ‘saggy bits’ that can …
When I was 13, my sister bought Collective Soul’s first album (Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid), and played it all summer long. As a result, every time I hear a song from that album, I am suddenly and very vividly 13 years old again. My brain has linked that music so irrevocably to my 13th year, and all the …