I’ve been working on a light tween fantasy the past couple months (my Camp NaNo project to be exact) and I finally managed to get the draft into somewhat decent shape so I could send it to a couple of critique partners. Their responses were what I’d been afraid of: the beginning is boring and [...]
Camp NaNo is finished and so is my new project. Well, kind of. It’s just a very rough draft right now with some scenes I already know need to be switched around, and with a couple characters that I’m still trying to figure out. But getting to the end of that draft always feels great. [...]
I’m sure I’ve talked about doubt before because, let’s face it, doubt and writing often go hand-in-hand. Something that I haven’t talked about, though, is that sometimes doubt can actually be a good thing. Sounds crazy, right? Let me explain. When you’re writing and you’re doubting if your story works or if you know your [...]
As I’ve been working on a new tween project, one thing that’s been really tripping me up is scene/chapter endings. This story isn’t quite as plot-driven as some of my other projects, so the chapter endings need to rely more on internal than external tension. I’ve found that this approach has led me to some [...]
It’s been a while since I did an update on my WIP, mostly because life has been so crazy the past few weeks that it’s been difficult for me to really settle into a project. But I finally have! Thanks in large part to Camp NaNoWriMo, I’m steadily working my way through a tween project [...]
James Scott Bell had a fantastic post about writers and doubt yesterday. He talked about how the two go hand-in-hand. Even writers who have “made it” can still experience crippling doubt. Since I’ve been struggling with the new projects I’ve been working on, Bell’s post really couldn’t have come at a better time. So what’s [...]
I haven’t done a WIP update in a while, probably because I’ve been a tiny bit schizophrenic with my current writing projects. I’ve started four–FOUR!–projects in the past couple of months. My brain doesn’t seem to want to settle down on anything. The problem is that I often jump into writing new ideas, only to [...]
The past month or so, I’ve been drafting two projects at the same time. I don’t usually do that (if I work on more than one thing at once, the projects are normally at different stages) but this time around, I’ve felt very restless with both ideas, so I’ve been skipping back and forth. I [...]
A while back, I did a post about the 3 causes of writer’s block. I was thinking again about that post this past week as I was feeling a little stuck with my new WIP. I’d been on a roll for the first few chapters, but suddenly I was stumped as to how to continue. [...]
When I was young, I couldn’t get enough of stories set in space. Whether they were on spaceships, space stations, or other planets, those stories really got my imagination going. Because of that, I’ve been wanting to write a story that involved space travel for years now, but I never had quite the right idea. [...]
