If you’re out of the habit of writing regularly, it can seem impossible to get back into it. NaNo was the jump start I needed to go back to a writing schedule. But now that November is over, I’m afraid of losing that momentum. Coincidentally, one of my critique partners is also trying to get [...]
Parents in children’s and young adult books are inconvenient. If they’re too involved in their children’s lives then it often limits what can happen in the story. In past projects I’ve worked on the parents have been missing or kidnapped or deceased. But now I have two new projects in which there’s at least one [...]
My husband’s family is full of creative optimists; they plunge into new ideas and try to make them work. It doesn’t always lead to success, but you can’t accuse them of not trying. When my husband gets an idea, usually for a techy thing, he often has to teach himself a new programming language in [...]
I have a confession. I’m a long-time sufferer of the Lazies. You must know the Lazies. When you should be writing, but you check your email instead, or watch TV, or organize your socks, or stare at a wall. It’s not that you’re a lazy person. It’s not that you don’t want to write. It’s [...]
I love reading books in which everything is connected. I don’t mean in a cute or overly convenient way. I’m talking about stories that feel complete, where you pay attention to all the details because you know they’re going to matter. And I love when a subplot connects with the main plot in a surprising [...]
So often I’ve heard the phrase “writers write,” meaning that in order to be a writer, you actually have to sit down in your chair and put things down on paper. But as I’ve been revising for weeks and weeks now, I’ve been feeling less like a writer and more like a construction worker. So [...]
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had more than one conversation about the pros and cons of featuring college-aged protagonists in YA. I’ve heard agents and editors say that having a YA character in college is a tough sell, that there isn’t much of a market for it. That’s why writers are often told that [...]
Over the summer, my creativity felt like it was coated in molasses. Now that the school year has started up and I have much less time to write, suddenly my creativity has gone into overdrive. While I’ve been trying to finish my fairy tale revision, two other ideas have popped into my head, demanding to [...]
Yesterday, there was a great question on the Elevensies site: Who do you write for? When I went to answer the question, I realized that while I write primarily for my adult and child selves, I also write for my husband. When it comes down to it, he is my ideal reader. In Stephen King’s [...]
I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to ask for help; I’m afraid of putting anyone out or making a fool out of myself. But if you think about it, a big part of writing is asking for help. There’s workshopping where you’re literally pouring your work into [...]
