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Yes, apparently, you can LOAN your Kindle ebooks.  At least, some of them.  I find this awesome because it allows you to say, “Hey, I think you’re going to love this author.  Give this book a try!” My nephew and I are finding that our reading preferences cross in strange places.  So, we’re a little excited to recommend books to each other.  Our new deal?  I’ll read Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Side of the Moon if he reads Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Unfortunately, neither of us have these books on the Kindle, so we can’t use theRead More →

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And the birds sang, the trees swayed happily, and I was free.  Free to spend as long as I needed filling in character, backstory, synopsizing scenes, and outlining. I have this from very reliable sources.  I recently took a Write It Forward workshop from Bob Mayer (on Twitter @Bob_Mayer) on Plot and Outline.  He says: Failing to do this essential background work sabotages the story before you type your first word and becomes very apparent to readers as they progress in your work. (Truly, this workshop was chock full of empowering, on-target info.  It would be worth the money to invest in one of the WriteRead More →

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I think I need to look into the gratuitous overuse of “Just”.Read More →

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I’m linking to this blog post from Bob Mayer because it explains the kernel idea perfectly and since this post is pretty much what made it click for me. I thought, I can’t do this.  I’m just 2 weeks in the outlining, charactering, plotting phase, and still–it’s not going to happen.  But, as writers, we tend to be a little sentimental about our stories–we dig hard enough, we can remember the moment where we thought, “This will be an awesome story.”  And I found it.  I will update you on how much having this (kernel idea) helps me as I go through the process, butRead More →

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I’m doing some research for a character (or two) with psychic abilities. I’m just trying to find out different kinds of abilities, maybe some ‘my experiences as a psychic’, etc. I’m open, right now, to just about anything. Would appreciate links or book suggestions. Thanks!Read More →

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I’ve really been struggling lately with process.  I’ve come to a dead end and, it occurred to me, it’s not the story.  It’s how I’m getting the story out.  I always considered myself a planner (vs. a pantser) but it occurred to me when I was actually writing five page descriptions of my heroine’s apartment that maybe I was doing too much planning. But writing the beginning of a story is easy. Or it is for me.  There’s so much to get out, so much you know is going to happen, it’s like you channel the story.  And then you hit that wall, where youRead More →

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So I’m a third to a half of the way through my manuscript and oh. my. God. I knew the beginning.  I had so much to write, to get all these threads and storylines moving.  I had to write and then condense and rewrite just to make sure I could get in everything important without rambling.  And then I get to this point and I’ve got nothing.  What comes next?  I sort of know the ending, though not the specifics, so where do I go from here?  Some ideas. A preset time (say, 30 minutes) of freewriting, preferably with a program that pushes you toRead More →

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Writing is an affliction, a disease of the soul, a rewiring in the head, like Asperger’s or some other form of autism. Like masturbation, it’s an uncontrollable and compulsive urge. It’s an obsession, a need, a drive. It’s not fun, and rewarding, and entertaining. It’s like having a bad movie play in loop in your head, so that your thoughts are either obsessing on words, or obsessing that your words are crap. It’s tortuous and exhausting, and if you could expel it from your possessed soul like an unwanted demon and be happy and content on a salaried wage, most writers would probably, in theirRead More →

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Writing is entirely too hard to not take seriously.  Like the decision to go on living, the decision to decide between life and quality of life, writing is a choice.  It’s not something we’re called to (though it may call to us, like the siren); it’s not something you do halfway, because maybe you can make it.  You commit to it, the way you commit to a career, to a marriage, to having children.  Because once it gets into your blood, there’s no quitting. Is writing fun?  All too rarely.  It can be thrilling, heartachingly frustrating, gut check time, and some of the highest elationRead More →

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Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. ~Rainer Maria Rilke via Quotegarden.com (which  no longer seems to exist). Writing makes me crazy. There are days that I can’t stop writing, even if I wanted to, and the story just keeps coming.  (I call this writer crack–no better feeling).  On other days, I stare in desperation at the screen or my notes and will something, anything to come.  And if I get a hundred words down,Read More →