Welcome to 2021 where we take our writing goals very seriously. Even when you hurt your back and your left contact is wigging out so badly, you're typing with just one eye on the screen while the other is closed just to make it through a few pesky emails and a blog post. So to … Continue reading How Long Should a Chapter Be?
Sorry for the delay! This holiday week has been a mess for me! Every year I hear the same things from new NaNoWriMo participants. Everything they're writing is terrible. They hate every word. None of it is good. They get discouraged and stall, trying to write something better moving forward. I want to tell every … Continue reading #NaNoWriMo: Quantity Over Quality
I love short stories. I love how concise they are. I love how you can just enjoy them in an afternoon. They are easy to recommend them to a friend because it's not a time suck. If they don't like the story it didn't take long and they weren't that invested. But I find them … Continue reading Why Short Stories Are Hard to Write (For Me)
I spent weeks praising my work and saying I was blessed beyond compare, but that changed quickly middle of last week. I got brought into the office and told there wasn't enough work to keep me. I packed up my things (left my pens by accident and I'm still bugged about that) and went on … Continue reading Writer’s Self Care
I am currently eating Chinese food and staring at two lines in an outline. Just two lines. It's been nearly a month into the new year and I cannot write for the life of me. The most I've written where these blog posts, and even then, part of me feels like I'm phoning them in. … Continue reading Beating that New Year Slump
This week, in the US, is Thanksgiving. It can be both a great time to catch up on writing and an absolutely terrible time to catch up on writing. Most years I would say it's an easy time for me. I would spend time with my parents and sister, eat too much, and write. There … Continue reading NaNo and Family
Ever been just thoroughly stuck in your novel? NaNoWriMo is a notorious time for everything you've been planning to just disappear. It's like all of your prep work was a beautiful dream and about half way through November you get woken up by your loud alarm clock and forget everything. I touched on what you … Continue reading Using Your Resources
If you've been following my blog for a bit, you'll have noticed I've mentioned Word Wars a fair few times. I find them to be a fantastic way to bolster the average amount of words written and it's a great way to break out of writer's block. But What is a Word War? A Word … Continue reading I Declare a Word War
The third week of October is upon us and I have another preptober prompt and discussion. This week we'll be talking about dialogue. I've only read one or two novels were dialogue wasn't important, so I'll say that focusing on how your characters talk is not only important but crucial to making your story flow. … Continue reading Preptober #3: “Write” Way to Talk (Perfecting Dialogue)
Today's post is going to be a little short. It addresses something that's never short and something I see beginning writers do all the time. I fell into this trap too when I was first starting out. Writing long arduous sentences because that's what important writers do. Writing is hard and when your shown classical … Continue reading Ebb and Flow of Sentences: Making a Scene Move
