At My Book Therapy we kicked off NaNoWriMo on the Monday night chat with advice from Beth Vogts. Susan Warren ended the evening with cyber karaoke of Stand By Me. I love these classic words, “I won’t be afraid, no I won’t be afraid.” Part of writing a novel, whether in a month or in a year, is overcoming fear. Insecurities surface. Life interrupts and demands our attention. Two pages into our opening paragraph we discover we’ve already written every great idea we had about the book and now we’ve no place to go! The temptation is to quit. So we never start at all. As you attempt NaNoWriMo, keep these things in mind. 1. Writing is hard work. Period. Forget what everyone else is doing, how fast they are […]
Read the RestArchive | November, 2011
Ignoring My Internal Editor
Fun. That’s what I told everyone: The 2010 MBT WriMo Celebration was going to be fun! And then I set my alarm for November 1, 2010. Bounded out of bed that morning before anyone else in the house was awake. Ran downstairs, ignoring the dogs whining for breakfast. Settled in front of my computer, ready to go. Because I had 50k words to write in 30 days. This was gonna be fun.And then the screaming started.Not me—Ed, as in my Internal Editor, started screaming.For every word I typed, he screamed a barrage of insults. “That’s an awful opening line!”“You need a bigger DELETE button!”“You should’ve stayed in bed! The dogs could write better than this!”Oh, yeah. This was some kind of fun.Writing that morning was a-g-o-n-y. There was only one […]
Read the RestA trick to jumpstarting your next chapter
Yesterday, I showed you a little trick I use to keep the momentum going between chapters. Here’s how I’m going to apply that trick! After I interview my character and let him take a little breather to recoup for the next scene, I begin to mull this interview over and take notes. (you do keep a book buddy beside you to help you write your chapters, right?) Here are my loose notes on the next scene: Luke POV. Show that Kenzie is trying to not be a burden, but she’s bored. Maybe he finds her acting out a scene? Keep up with the suspense thread….what is happening with Dark Secret? Does he Google the book? Does she see it? Have her in town, doing something mundane like the […]
Read the Rest
