Better Questions This Time Around
I’ve pretty much spent the last year in picture-book revision mode–before the Big Sur workshop to get ready and after the workshop to integrate the feedback I got. I’m sending these stories through my new critique group and then using their comments for yet more revision. But, as I submit to the group and wait […]
Why Start Writing? Sometimes, Just to Get to the Questions.
I started a new project yesterday. Voices: You what?! You have a picture book to revise. You have a YA novel to just figure out. There’s that other picture book that’s just sitting there in first-draft stasis! What were you thinking?! Me: Oh, hush. Yes, despite all the reasons not to, I opened up a […]
The End. AKA..Whoa, What Now?
I’m a little bit happy. And I’m a little bit scared. And I’m VERY kind, because I am NOT inserting a video of Donny & Marie singing I’m a Little Bit Country. You’re welcome. So…I just finished the first draft of my WIP. 209 pages. 40 scenes. A whole heckuva lot of unknowns. I’ve had […]
This is My Brain. This is My Brain on Plot.
This post is dedicated to Terri Thayer, for listening and not once telling me I’m crazy. What my brain tells me when I announce that, in the second draft of this WIP, we may be dropping one entire, MAJOR plotline: Wow! Wouldn’t this be a betrayal of Character X? Who just happens to have been […]
The End is (Possibly) in Sight
Report: The 1st draft of my historical YA is moving along. Quickly. Okay, not that quickly. Individual scenes are not zooming along, not flying from my fingers in a state of loveliness. Hardly. Let’s say I’m seriously channeling Anne Lamott these days. It does feel like I could, if I wanted, count out the number […]
Resisting Temptation…Writing Through to “The End”
So I’ve got this synopsis. It’s not perfect, by any means, and it has a lot of work to go before I’d let myself send it off as an actual submission piece. (Of course, so does the story!). It’s written, though, and it’s got a lot of information in it that I hadn’t realized/known before, […]
A Little Light at the End of the First-Draft Tunnel
If you’ve been following along, you may know that I’ve been writing the first draft of this WIP a little differently than my “usual” style. Oh, I plotted…way back sometime in what feels as distant and obscure as the Dark Ages. And, in essence, I’m sending my MC through the places and some of the […]
Thankful Thursday and NOT Being the Bear
First, I want to say a HUGE thank you to Judge Vaughn Walker for declaring Prop 8… UNCONSTITUTIONAL! Yes, it seems like a big Duh! on the one hand, and I know there is more battle coming, but over here in California, many, many of us (really!) are dancing for joy at the breaking-through-the-clouds moment […]
Sometimes Progress is Little Steps
When I first started working on this WIP (which really needs a working title!), I read Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel (my review here) and spent a chunk of time with his workbook of the same name. In the course of doing some of the workbook exercises, I wrote a few actual scenes–trying to get […]
Five Writing Things I’ve Thought about This Week
1. Letting the first draft be the wind-up draft, knowing that the action/big stuff is stating way late in the story. Imagining myself borrowing my husband’s HUGE new shopvac and just SUCKING that slow, padding away in the next revision. 2. Reactions. When something happens in a story, the characters–ESPECIALLY the point of view character–has […]
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