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Posted on October 4, 2021 2 Comments
And all the characters that went with it. The latest way that I cut dead weight out of my story was to separate my core plot from world-building details. I had scenes, whole chapters, and subplots that I didn’t like anymore and knew weren’t necessary, but I didn’t want to delete them because they revealed […]
Posted on September 20, 2021 1 Comment
Is a balancing act. “Reader, writer, full-time mom” is a job that must be flexible. All parents (no matter what their work/life balance situation) have to flex for school breaks, seasonal activities, and everything else we must do to live in a clean healthy place and eat basic food groups. So I am trying to […]
Posted on September 6, 2021 Leave a Comment
The writer can play. I have a freshman in high school (that’s nuts) and a third grader that are both back in school. My trusty canine writing assistant and I now have the quiet and focus to edit. But we didn’t at first. I took two days to rest my mind and body after the […]
Posted on August 23, 2021 Leave a Comment
And thankfully a community endeavor as well. My writing group and early readers are awesome. When I am stuck on a project and can’t see a way through, I put it in their hands with questions typed up at the end and wait. And wait and wait. But as I mentioned in my post Appreciate […]
Posted on August 9, 2021 1 Comment
And it’s making me anxious and sad. This spring I submitted draft five or six (I’ve lost count) of my first book to a few friends who had never seen it before and to my writing group. After I slashed words in that book by the thousands (see my post If you think there is […]
Posted on June 14, 2021 1 Comment
My story doesn’t control me. Sometimes I forget this. I’m an improvisor/pantser so that first draft is often over genre wordcount guidelines by thousands and has subplots that end up going nowhere. I almost always have to rewrite the beginning once I’ve refined the ending. But I control the story. It doesn’t control me. So […]
Posted on May 17, 2021 2 Comments
Every. single. time. My husband hasn’t read a published book in a year. He’s too busy reading my drafts—and, you know, working, biking, doing things he loves. I try not to ask him more than once a week: “What chapter are you on?” I try. I do. But I devour books in a matter of […]
Posted on April 19, 2021 Leave a Comment
The flip side of sharing my work was reading the work of others. Connecting personally with writers (in my genre and outside of it) and positively critiquing their work gave me another leap forward in my writing journey. In addition to reading published works, I improved my writing skills by consuming and discussing the unpublished […]
Posted on April 5, 2021 1 Comment
I’m not ready. Is it good enough? What if they hate it? Putting your work in front of other people can be scary. Even thinking about letting others read your book can make you want to run screaming or hide under the bed. (Hopefully you don’t hold it tightly while murmuring my precious…) Being nervous […]
Posted on March 22, 2021 1 Comment
Think you just lost your work? Don’t Panic. Easier said than done. Channeling Douglas Adams didn’t stop my meltdown one Sunday morning. I absolutely panicked. I wanted to cry because I thought I lost thirty pages of rewrites I was very excited about. My laptop automatically syncs to the cloud. Did I remember that in […]
Beth Green 