Raise your hand if you've been having trouble concentrating this last week. With Coronavirus sweeping the world, it's been hard to think about anything other than keeping your #SocialDistance and what you will do now it's impossible to find toilet paper. If you're lucky enough to be able to work from home, you're also facing …
Continue reading How To Stay Creative When The World Is On Fire
No writer starts a work in progress with the intention of not taking it all the way. That first sentence is always created with every expectation you'll type "The end", but sometimes it just doesn't happen. Life sidelines you. A shiny new idea comes along. Or this idea is simply the one that gets away. …
Continue reading 4 Signs It’s Time To Dump Your Work In Progress
Happy New Year, everyone! It's time to get out of that magical land between Christmas and New Year when you're full of chocolate and cheese and don't know what day it is. 2020 brings the chance to start afresh, kick off some resolutions, and get back into the writing game. If, like me, you took …
Continue reading Getting Back On The Writing Track After The Holidays
Writing a book takes time. Even if you're a fast drafter and can put something together in a matter of weeks instead of months or years, working through the multiple drafts it takes to reach the final draft is still tough. You're so exhausted at the end, that the thought of starting again at a blank …
When you've been working on your manuscript for several years, you've read it more than a few times. In fact, you've probably read it so much you can quote whole paragraphs from it. It's a side effect of reading your words repeatedly, and the editing, rewriting, proofing—and let's just throw another edit in there because …
Continue reading Reading Your Book: Thoughts That Run Through Your Head
So, it happened. You gave your manuscript to someone to read, expecting accolades, messages of praise, or at the very least, confirmation the story and characters are good—and the feedback wasn't what you were expecting. In fact, it signaled that your MS is bad. Really. Bad. While this kind of feedback is enough to crush …
One thing I love about writing is the days when the words just flow. Every sentence you pen down comes out near perfect, first time. Every transition to the next paragraph is effortless, and the ideas and inspiration seem limitless. What started as a blank page is now pages upon pages of pure writing gold! …
There's so much to learn when writing a book, and even more to master when editing. Not only do you have to be proficient in structuring plots, invoking the five senses, adding tension, writing realistic dialogue, and showing instead of telling, you also need to know what words to delete and which darlings to revive. …
Some (rambling) thoughts about the MS I have out on submission. Let me know if you can relate... This is the draft where I saw everything that was wrong. This is the draft that broke me. This is the draft where I wanted to give up. This is the draft I learned from. This is …
