Where Normal Need Not Apply
We’ve heard of rewriting, revising, and even re-imagining, but what does “re-envisioning” mean? I recently came across the word in a great post by Juliette Wade about how to redo a scene without rewriting. When a scene isn’t working, it’s tempting to blame the scene and get rid of it. […]
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Sometimes it still comes as a shock to me that anyone visits my blog and cares about what I have to say. So when I received my first blog award, I was completely unprepared. My first thought was of being tremendously flattered. I think my exact reaction was, Me? Seriously? […]
Fantasy: To become an author, we just need to have a great idea, write it down, and then agents, publishers, and readers will all magically appear. Reality: Nothing like that. Becoming an author isn’t simple. Oh no. We have what seems like a never-ending list of things to learn and […]
Yesterday, author Jody Hedlund had a blog post about why most writers are blind to their own faults. The first reason she mentioned really resonated with me: We naturally view our work through our maturity level. When we first start any new project, writing or otherwise, we don’t know what […]
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Over the past six months, I’ve received feedback on my work from many sources—contest judges to beta readers. A lot of them told me things I didn’t want to hear. It would have been very easy to get defensive and react along the lines of: Didn’t they read it? It’s […]
Several months ago, I ran a post about what to look for in a critique partner. One of the points I’d made was to evaluate whether a potential critique partner was familiar with our genre. Only someone knowledgeable about our genre would know the expectations for pacing, character development, etc. […]
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I get a brief reprieve from the deadline cave this week while I wait for feedback from my awesome readers. When I first sent my work out to them, I felt great. This work was as good as I could make it. But going back to last week’s perfection posts […]
Yes, I’m still under deadline, but an interesting issue came up in the comments on my last post about perfectionism. Perfectionists tend to be nitpicky, no surprise there. But there’s a time when that trait is very helpful, and a time when we need to ignore the compulsion to tweak. […]
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I’m still in the deadline cave and self-banned from Twitter, but I wanted to post about something I’ve realized through this revision process. It’s probably safe to say we all want to get better at our jobs, whether that’s writing or something else. But how much of what we do […]
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I’m in a deadline cave this week, so I have just a short post inspired by my current crazy schedule. I’m so grateful to my awesome critique partners and beta readers. They’re trying to keep me sane. Or at least, they’re trying to keep me from going completely insane. But […]
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