Outlining for a discovery writer

I’m almost finished with the rough draft of Bringing Stella Home, but I can’t shake the feeling that this draft really sucks and is full of holes.   Part of that is probably that I wrote the whole thing  out of the top of my head.  The only part that I really took the time to… Continue reading Outlining for a discovery writer

Fine tuning and David Gemmell ROCKS!!!

With Danke’s help, I’ve tweaked the site yet some more: updated the header image, put in the site description under the title, moved the comments link at the bottom of each post (where it really belongs–having it at the top is confusing), etc.  Now, the site is even better than ever! All this playing around… Continue reading Fine tuning and David Gemmell ROCKS!!!

Breaking 90k and other mundane excitements

(I almost always have trouble figuring out titles for these blogs posts.  I mean, my writing life isn’t all that exciting–I just write.  Check out my study abroad blog from last year for true (if old) excitement). I broke 90k words in Bringing Stella Home today.  According to my goal of 120k, that’s the 3/4 mark.… Continue reading Breaking 90k and other mundane excitements

The second wind of inspiration

The more I write, the more I’ve come to realize that in order to finish a novel, you have to rediscover something powerful about the story that motivates you to tell it.  The thing that motivates you to start the story is rarely the thing that drives you to finish it. Around the second half… Continue reading The second wind of inspiration

13,837 words in a day?

Yeah, that’s right.  Believe it or not, I barreled through about 13,837 words today.  That’s thirteen THOUSAND, not thirteen hundred. Now, only about a thousand of that was new stuff  that I was writing.  Most of the rest of it was rearranging scenes that I’d already written, touching them up only a tiny bit.  I… Continue reading 13,837 words in a day?

Ugh. Just ugh.

Man, it was hard to write.  So hard, I only just finished, and it’s 1:30 am.  Ugh. The reason it was hard was because the character’s reactions in this scene needed to be totally revamped.  That also necessitated a complete shift in the structure of the writing, because the rough draft consisted almost entirely of… Continue reading Ugh. Just ugh.

Getting into it

Three days into Bringing Stella Home 1.1 and I’m really getting into it.  I’ve reworked the first and second chapters a ton.  It’s coming along surprisingly well, considering I was just about ready to throw in the towel a month ago. So far I’m over 12,000 words into the story, which shows up on the progress bar as… Continue reading Getting into it

Almost done!

Yay!  I’m almost done with Genesis Earth 2.0!  6k words of revision done today, bringing the project up to 95% complete.  Just the final scene of the final chapter, and then the epilogue, and she’s done! (Well, at least the second draft is done.  She’s probably going to need a lot more work after that, but… Continue reading Almost done!

Breaking a roadblock

About a month ago, I stopped working on my novel Bringing Estella Home because I hit a roadblock.  Basically, I realized at the end of the second part that I had failed to work out all of the secondary characters and their duties and responsibilities in the mercenary group that the protagonist hires.  I had a… Continue reading Breaking a roadblock

Miscellaneous news updates

I’m so bad at writing catchy titles for my blog posts.  CORRECTION: I can come up with catchy, sexy, exciting titles for my blog posts, it’s just that the first one that comes to mind is always dull and uninteresting.  Well, too bad.  To quote my mother: “suffer!” Item One: State of the summer plans Real… Continue reading Miscellaneous news updates