I hated that question for most of last year. Why? Because the writing wasn’t going. As in, not at all. (I talked about why in this post.) However, I didn’t want to say that, because that would have been hugely discouraging. Discouraging to whom, you might ask? For starters, it wouldn’t have been the best news …
I attended the James River Writers Conference for the very first time in 2006. I was just beginning to explore this idea that perhaps I could write something (hesitant to call myself a writer). I was working on my first story (hesitant to call it a novel). Last weekend, nine years later, I attended the …
I’ve written before about identifying myself as a writer, how it didn’t come naturally at first, and how I used to always feel compelled to qualify it in some way. I’ve come a long way in that regard and, while it still isn’t totally habitual, I usually remember to answer “writer” when asked what I …
When you’re working on something really huge, you know, something like getting a degree, starting a business, becoming healthier or building a house– you do these little incremental things everyday that support that goal. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like much, right? We say things like I only wrote one page of my dissertation or got …
Had a little long distance happy hour with my friends (and awesome authors) Julia Kelly and Alexis Anne last night. We talked about holiday-themed novellas and whether we read them (Julia) or not (Alexis and I). We also chatted about using the holidays in our own writing, as well as about some of our own …
Recently my friend (and awesome romance writer), Alexis Anne, shared with me that reading Neverending Beginnings made her want to make lasagna for dinner. (My main character in the novel repeats the same week over and over, and therefore makes lasagna over and over.) This has to be one of the coolest things anyone has told …
This past weekend, I broke into my old apartment. I have written before about basing my main character, Kate’s, apartment in Neverending Beginnings on my own first apartment in Richmond (pictured in the background above). The story I just finished writing picks up at the end of the novel, but follows Kate’s neighbor, Carolyn. Since …
Ever tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. – Samuel Beckett The instructor of the first writing workshop I ever attended shared this quote with us all on the first night of class and it has stuck with me over the years. We live in a success focused world. Yet, seldom …
Deciding where the characters in a story live is key. The world you create, has to be real to the reader, whether it exists or not. In fantasy this requires detailed descriptions to help the reader see a world with pink trees and streets paved in black licorice as if it were their own. …
It was sort of a surreal experience; one moment there was this manuscript on my computer and the next it was out there in the electronic universe, just waiting to be clicked on. It still doesn’t particularly seem real to see it’s little icon sitting there on my virtual bookshelf. Just like the band labeled …
