Where Normal Need Not Apply
I finished the first draft of another WIP (work in progress) on Monday. Guess how I celebrated? *cringes* Uh, yeah…I did nothing. Yes, it was too late to go out for a celebratory dinner. And yes, I have a lot of editing to do. But shouldn’t I have done something? Sure, […]
Several writers I know have recently tried the “Fast Draft” method. What is the Fast Draft method? Fast drafting entails getting the framework of our stories down as fast as possible—without worrying what that draft looks like. Author Candace Havens says it’s possible to complete a first draft in two weeks. […]
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(Read below for updates.) Recently, a thief broke into my brother’s house. They weren’t home, so no one was physically hurt. However, the shock of the crime still caused emotional pain. The thief didn’t take too much, mostly just small things he could carry, but now they wonder if the […]
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Last week, we talked about how stories change from the initial story seed to the first draft. Then it dawned on me that I’ve experienced that same evolution between a first draft and a finished draft, where so much changed that I hardly recognized the original story any more. For fun, […]
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Many writers, especially new ones, talk about how they write for themselves. When we first start out, we might not know if we’ll even be able to finish the project, so it makes sense that we’re writing for ourselves. We want to get this story out of our head. We want to […]
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Today I’m being interviewed at two different blogs. This is only the second time I’ve done interviews for my writing, but I’ve decided I really enjoy them. I don’t mean that in a narcissistic, oh-I’m-so-important way. Rather, I get a kick out of seeing what other people ask about. For […]
Last year, I discovered the fantastic resources available for writers at The Bookshelf Muse blog. Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi have created valuable references for writers with their thesaurus collections. The Emotion Thesaurus gives lists of all the different ways to show an emotion (including non-cliché ones!). The Setting Thesaurus includes […]
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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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I’m still at Disneyland, so I have another guest joining us today. This is the second installment of a new feature here on my blog: Interview with a…Muse (because interviewing our characters is just too sane). After I had so much fun with my Do You Have a Muse? post, […]
My Twitter friend Austin Wulf wrote a blog post yesterday, What’s So Bad About Perfectionism?, and that question got me thinking. My blog readers might know I call myself not just a perfectionist, but an over-achieving perfectionist. Is that a bad thing? *smile* I think it depends. Is Perfectionism Bad? […]
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