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 […]
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A 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 RestSeven Things Every Writer Must Do: Part One
Seven Things Every Writer Must Do: Part One You plot and develop the characters that readers will fall in love with. Sit at the computer and type. All of those things are necessary but there are also seven things every writer simply has to do in order to be successful. Over the next seven weeks, I’ll be blogging about those every Saturday. Part One: Dream Without Limits If you spend much time around me, you’ll eventually hear me ask, “What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?” It’s a valid question because I believe most writers put a lid on their potential. They could do so much more but they don’t because their dreams are way too small. For a writer who wants to succeed in […]
Read the RestBefore You Submit a Proposal
You can’t help it. It’s time. Really time. You’ve been writing and rewriting this book for eons. Or at least it feels like eons. You want to submit it, get going on your stellar writing career. Time’s a wastin’! Maybe you haven’t been working on it for eons, but you went to a conference and you heard an editor say she was really looking for the next great romance author to groom and you have just the story. Or finally, one of the BIG PUBLISHERS is actively seeking speculative fiction and your space navy story is ready for the picking. Perhaps your story has been through a critique or edit of some kind. A reader (mom, dad, sister, best friend, hubby, wifey) LOVED it. They want more! […]
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