The other day, Heather Kelly blogged about following your creative energy. It came at the perfect time for me because as I was trying to work on my fairy tale revisions, a picture book idea kept poking at my brain. It was demanding to be written. I’ve been stressing about this revision for a while [...]
I was talking with a couple of my students about writer’s block yesterday. Feeling blocked can be such a tricky thing to overcome, and it’s easy to get frustrated or overwhelmed by it. Based on my experiences, I believe there are 3 major causes of writer’s block. 1. You’ve put too much pressure on yourself. [...]
As I’ve been working on revising my fairy tale (yet again) I’ve been thinking about something my agent said in her comments about one of my two main characters: You need to make us fall in love with him. Easy task, right? Um. Yeah. One of the things that makes characters relatable is when we [...]
On Monday afternoon, I finished reading through my fairy tale revision one last time and decided it was finally ready to send off to my agent. After it was out of my hands, I was excited and exhausted all at the same time. And that was the beginning of what I’ve been calling the “post-revision [...]
The other day I picked up a book I’d been looking forward to reading for a while. Sadly, I couldn’t even get past the first chapter. The first few pages were almost all description of the setting and of characters we hadn’t met yet. After that, the narrative launched into an extended flashback; it felt [...]
I’ve been a little distracted recently. Between book deal excitement and new dog excitement and it’s-so-hot-my-brain-is-melting excitement, my WIP has been a tad neglected. But this week I decided enough was enough: I was going to work on my retelling if it killed me. Monday was hard. I couldn’t stop checking my email every two [...]
One of the things people have been curious about with MY UN-FAIRY TALE LIFE is the process of writing it and finding a publisher. It’s a bit of a winding story, so pull up a chair and kick back. Here it is, the (somewhat long) story of my funny little book. The Story is Born [...]
Last week I posted about the game of 20 Questions my friend and I played with my WIP. The session was immensely helpful and got me excited to work on the story again. On top of that, my friend offered to read part of my story to help me figure out if I’m on the [...]
Yesterday, I was talking to a friend online about my WIP. Well, “talking” isn’t really the right word – “whining about” is more accurate. I was telling him how stuck and uninspired I’ve been feeling. After he asked me some questions about my story and my characters, I finally realized this: “Sometimes it feels like [...]
So I’m back from NYC, tired and rejuvenated at the same time. We did all kinds of fun things like biking around Central Park and watching the World Cup with a bar full of strangers. I didn’t write a word all weekend and you know what? That was absolutely fine. What’s funny is that ordinarily, [...]
