I found Sally in line for coffee as I entered the coffee shop. She had already dumped her bag onto a chair, had already tugged off her gloves, her wool jacket, and wore her game face. “What’s up? Did you not have a great thanksgiving?” “It was fine. But, I’m 3000 words away from finishing my novel.” “That’s great.” I shed my jacket and motioned to Kathy. She gave me a smile, already on my order. “No so much.” She retrieved her coffee and handed me mine. I nodded my appreciation. “Why?” “Because I only have 46000 words and I’m near the end of my novel.” “And?” “It’ supposed to be an 80,000 word novel! How am I going to come up with 30,000 more words?” “Oh, I see. You […]
Read the RestArchive | Truth or Dare: Conversations with an aspiring novelist RSS feed for this section
The self-publishing journey of a MBT author
Yesterday we posted part one of an interview with a self-published author that MBT had the priviledge of coaching this past year. Read that post here: Today is part two of the journey. SMW: Dennis, you’ve written a delightful Christmas novella, South Pole Santa! Can you take us through the history of this story and help us understand how you went from idea to finished product? Dennis: The first draft was a really rough draft. Bear in mind it was already December and I was only starting to write the story. So I really hurried to get the first draft done and I completed it on December 7 and it was about 10,000 words. You and I discussed did a couple of days later and I’ll never forget that first […]
Read the RestConversations: The journey of a self-pubbed author – part one
Today, on Conversations, I’m excited to talk to another author (Sorry Sally – you’ll be back next week) who I was privileged to work with this year. This is a long interview, so I’ve broken it into two parts (today and tomorrow!) You might not know that a big part of MBT is helping authors through our private coaching program. We work with new authors to multi-published authors, coaching them through their stories. I’m thrilled that many of them have landed on best-seller lists and won awards. Often, they are traditionally published stories – but occasionally we work on a self-published story. One of my favorite self-pubbed projects came to me about a year ago. I loved it immediately – a story of a family caught in technology, who needed […]
Read the RestConversations: Understanding Turning Points
“I’m so sorry,” Sally said, sitting down and unwrapping her scarf from her neck. Outside, ice glazed the puddles, the sky a slate gray. The first hint of snow hung in the air, the world of northern Minnesota in crisp expectation. It was a perfect day to teach Sally about how to understand Turning Points in a novel. I love the change of seasons. I blew on my candy cane mint mocha. “Why?” “Our high school football season is over,” she said. “I know how you love to go to the games.” I do. I live for the Friday night lights. “It was a tough game. A number of game-changing turning points that could have turned the game our way. Our boys fought a tough fight.” “I heard that on […]
Read the Rest
