I plot. I spend weeks figuring out characters, locations, and flaws. And then I dig in deep. I plot my story out, by acts and beats, down to each and every scene of my story. And, sometimes, those scenes have beats and entire stretches of dialog in the notes. Thinking Through Our Fingers: In the Mind of an Outliner – Arcs and Structure. This is front loading a story with lots of work. I know this. But as a teacher, mom, wife, and all the other things, I realized I was doing more work trying to keep a story in my head than taking theRead More →

This month has been spent in revision hell. I’m revising two novels and trying very hard to get them ready for a March 31 submission. One is a hard deadline; the other is self-imposed (important if we ever want to get our stories out there–there’s always a reason to not be writing if we let there be). But there is no hell for the writer like Revision Hell. I currently reside on the seventh level, the ‘this book sucks’ level where plot points and dialogue I thought were so cool in the first draft now strike me as vapid globs of desperation. Oh lord, deliverRead More →

When I first started writing, I wanted someone to tell me how to go about the process of doing so. Turns out, those posts are fairly rare because process is as personal as fingerprints. Nonetheless, I’m going to begin sharing mine with you. Read More →

I wanted to share my post from the HSG blog this month because it’s about writing accountability. I have quazillioned my output this year and if you want to do the same, go read my post! Writing AccountabilityRead More →

I am so. close. to writing the end on my novella. I have written all the scenes that set up the big bang scenes and the black moment. I’m crazy excited. And busy. So, I though I’d just share a picture with you about how insane writing can look to outsiders.   Click for a larger look.Read More →

I found my critique partner through a website (Ladies Who Critique) about eight months ago. We exchanged a chapter to see if we would be a fit. We decided to chat on Google a week later and about five minutes in she said, “Can I just call you? I hate chatting.” Feeling slightly awkward about my West Virginia accent, I reluctantly agreed. (She doesn’t know I was reluctant. I’m shy. Shh, that’s a secret). That night, we went over our crits, answered questions, brainstormed. Then we spent three hours talking about writing, and story, and good books. And life. It was like we were meantRead More →

Alicia Rasley (blog) is a wildly talented writer and teacher who should get more recognition than she does. I bought her e-book in PDF, Discovering the Story Within, before people were even reading e-books. (My only complaint: it’s full of awesome worksheets, but the PDF is protected against copying, pasting, highlighting–anything you right-click to do, so filling them out in a word-processing program is impossible.) Plotting But, for today, and for GMC month, I’d like to point you to an article she did on her site called Plotting Without Fears. In this article she tells you the quick and dirty way to plot a story. FindRead More →

I think I opened one hell of a can of worms when I offered to post one of my sample biographies last week.  Three hours later, I’ve done the prep work and I’m ready to post. The biography I’m including today is for a secondary character in the manuscript I’m working on now.  Because I wanted to make comments so you could see my process, I typed it into MS Word, used the Review>Comment button to add info along the right side (in pretty blue bubbles) and, occasionally, in the text itself (but also in blue).   You can download the PDF here* and itRead More →

So, I’ve had my cards a week now.  First impressions: the cards I chose (the Vanessa Tarot) are small.  I was expecting big and… important.  But they’re small, like regular playing cards.  But once I had them out, handling them, shuffling them–I didn’t mind the size so much. Using the tarot was both harder and easier than I expected.  At once, cards that called to me, that spoke to who my characters were and what I knew of them, made their way into the spread.  I’ll just give you some samples, since I wrote all of my cards (and impressions) down. Character: The three ofRead More →

So, I needed some creative inspiration. I keep coming back to these characters. Their story stalled on me. It lacked direction, I think. But the characters. I love these characters. Then, a series of blog posts came across my computer, on Tarot cards and writing from Raelyn Barclay (@raelynbarclay on Twitter). I remembered a Material Girl post I did, years ago, about using Tarot cards to help write. I’d even picked out the deck I wanted (which is good, I’d never have remembered after this long). I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I checked out the cards again and they’re just beautiful.Read More →