A DREAM – A STORY – A JOURNEY
My word for 2021 is culminate and it has served to both motivate my work and motivate my rest this first quarter of the year. This week I especially leaned into it as I navigated how I was going to leave my period of rest after a few weeks off from writing and set goals... Continue Reading →
There are points during the year when writing fatigue kicks in. Deciding how to react to it, whether it's time to push on through a deadline like during NaNoWriMo or to take a break from the relentless pace I've set myself on, is important both for my own balance and for my stories. I've found... Continue Reading →
When I am writing a story, I love to research what I'm writing. This is true when it's a subject I'm fairly familiar with, like cooking or crafting, and it's also true with subjects I don't have much experience in, like outdoor survival skills or variants in algebra. When I run into those things I'm... Continue Reading →
Last week I really struggled with the timeline of the story. Trying to overlay the chapters to an actual calendar spread of the months that the story was going to span proved to be really difficult. I started this piece of the process for two reasons. First was because I wanted to see what the... Continue Reading →
It’s so comforting to feel the familiarity of my routines as I get ready to start working on a manuscript. Each piece of my process feels like wrapping myself in a favorite blanket and the excitement builds each step of the way. Last week I did nearly everything I needed to in order to start... Continue Reading →
The story I started over a decade ago is finally complete! I printed the first complete draft of MS:T and it is a beautiful thing. It's a first complete draft that I can say I am really proud of. The things that came out in the writing, those surprises that I didn't plan for even... Continue Reading →
As I was revising MS:T this week, I was confronted with a weakness in my process that I really want to work on this year. It's a problem that I think stems from either a lack of defined 'this is what I plan digitally vs. paper', or 'this is the plan I follow step by... Continue Reading →
One of the most important pieces of preparing for NaNoWriMo is to gather my resources. Now, not all resources can be gathered in the same way. My resources are not just tangible things, like the books I love to reference or the word count stickers I use in my planner that bring me joy. My... Continue Reading →
Preparing for the NaNoWriMo challenge is, like most annual events happening in 2020, familiar and very different. National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is the challenge that writers take on to complete a 50,000 word manuscript in the month of November. The writing only takes place in the month of November which breaks down the word... Continue Reading →
Last week I needed to remind myself of this each and every day. I needed to remind myself to have patience with myself and with the pace at which I will need to work toward my goals. At the beginning of this year, like everyone, I set my goals with a different kind of world... Continue Reading →
