Hello Everyone! I just finished a novel. As I write to you from my turret tower, my friend Carrie sitting on the floor with my dog Lola, I gaze out my window at my farm… Wait, there’s no farm. Pardon me, I’m a bit punchy. I lapsed into Christmas in Connecticut. I just finished a rewrite, Once Upon A Prince, in about 20 days. I know some people who shall be nameless, Susan May Warren, write whole books from scratch in that amount of time, but I am not such a writer. I’m getting fast but I’m like to mull. Chew. Think. I’m the kind of person who comes up with a fabulous retort or brilliant response to a conversation three days later. But then no one cares to hear my […]
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Maximizing Your Rewrite
I just finished a rewrite of Once Upon A Prince, releasing April 2013 from Zondervan. Covered nearly 87K words in two weeks. Not my favorite thing to do – tackle a rewrite in two weeks but that’s how it worked out. The opening needed a big change in my mind as well as my editor’s. Openings are my weakest. I tend to tell too much story. Not back story per say, just too much “pipe” as we say at My Book Therapy. I build too much story world. So I needed to tackle the opening and when I do that, I tend to ripe to shreds and start over. I probably rewrote the opening five times. Here’s the danger in doing that: forgetting other correlating threads in the story. I […]
Read the RestGetting Ready for Conference
The ACFW Conference is coming up in a month and it’s time to start getting ready. No, don’t pack your suitcase yet, but start thinking about what you’ll need before you hit the conference road. Whether you’re a planner or not, it’s always good to jot a few notes in preparation for any trip, especially a fast paced conference. Here’s a few things I do: Print out my flight plan. Always good to know when my flight is taking off. Hubby loves the early morning flights when he has to drive me to the airport at 5:00 a.m. Get business cards or any other “hand out” material ready. I’ve taken off more times than I care to confess without my business cards and I regret it every time. So get […]
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Interview with a Hero
I was working on the hero of my next book and found I couldn’t get anything real out of him. He was a bit two-dimensional. Flat. Too single purposed. I went through my standard exercises – dark wound, lie, fear, secret desire, true destiny… You can see that here: Dark Moment: Being yanked from his school, his family, his home to go to another boarding school. Lie: Don’t get close. Don’t open your heart too wide. Fear: Love involves pain. He’s even assigned that to God. Look what He did to His own son. But Tanner knows God is real and true, and he must seek Him. But is standoffish Secret desire/true identity: ?? What can he do in the end he can’t do in the beginning? Be honest about […]
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