On Writing
What’s The Secret Ingredient To Finishing Your Book?
Answer: There is no secret ingredient. There's just you. When I started NaNoWriMo, I wanted to make sure I armed myself with all the things I would need to finish successfully. So I set expectations with my family and myself about writing time. I...
Are You Having Fun? 3 Questions to Ask Yourself.
Dale Carnegie once said, "People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing." I love that. It's a reminder to me that if I am dragging my heels about something that I need to reframe it. How can I make it a better experience? Most of us are good at...
Unfolding Your Own Myth
I haven't written enough fiction (yet!) to find my fiction voice, but I do think that blog writing lends itself well to having a writing voice in general. For fiction, I find myself turning back to my favorite authors, reading their great works again with my editor's...
Scene Mapping With Scrivener
So in my last post, I talked about how Rachel Aaron recommends making a scene map. Since I own Scrivener, I imported my MS Word file from NaNoWriMo (100+ pages!) into Scrivener and now I have a great visual way to see my story with the Corkboard view. Here's the...
You Finished Writing Your 1st Draft, Now What?
Ok Wrimos, you've made it to the magical milestone of finishing your first draft. It was awesome, you celebrated, you took a snapshot of your winner certificate. But now what? If you're like me, you're probably slightly nauseated at the editing and re-writes that...
3 Things I used to Refill the Creative Well after NaNoWriMo
I had heard other authors discussing this but had nothing to base it on until after doing NaNoWriMo myself, and that is the experience of writing until you are empty. 50k words was the most I had ever written before on any subject, EVER. It was over 100 pages single...
What Every Writer Needs to Finish NaNoWriMo
I finished 50k words tonight. There were a lot of reasons why I didn't think I was going to make it. I had been traveling (3 trips in November!), I had family obligations, I had a day job that I needed in order to pay the bills. But overall, I made a big push for it...
Start From the End
NaNoWriMo was set to start on Nov. 1 whether I had a plan or not. So I went over to my co-blogger's house and sat at her cozy kitchen nook and jotted down some character notes. A few minutes later, I had a vague plan. Meet Anna, an aspiring Valkyrie. Then, before I...
Day 2 of NaNoWriMo
I wrote over 3k words on Day 1, and it was easier than I thought with the help of dictation. It took probably about just over two hours to do that. I resisted the urge to edit, but of course cleaned up all the dictation randomness. For the month of October, I had a...
Walking and Dictating Your Novel on Your iPhone
This morning I woke up earlier as part of my NaNoWriMo kickoff. But not too much earlier. Just 30 minutes. Then I had a cup of tea to fortify myself, laced up my Kangaroo sneakers and off I went to start my great American novel. I mean, I was armed with my iPhone 6...
Using Dictation on the iMac to Write Your Book
As the old adage goes, "How do you eat an elephant?" One bite at a time. NaNoWriMo is 50,000 words in 30 days. How does one crank out roughly ~1700 words a night? I had listened to a couple of podcast interviews where the guests had discussed writing fiction through...
Can Just Anyone Be A Writer?
Of course. It is what Nike's ad genius once said. "Just Do It." I was recently in France and I was able to walk miles - in museums, along the Seine, into churches and past street booksellers. Yes, the book is still art in France and these booksellers each keep a...