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On Spec or Proposal? When you want to sell a book, there are two options. First, you can write the book, hoping that it will sell. We call this writing “on speculation,” or “on spec.” It means you are taking the up-front risk of time and effort to write, in the hopes that someone will [...]
If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, you’ll be starting at midnight tonight or first thing in the morning. You’ll be opening your story with a great scene, right? Here are resources for those first lines, opening chapters of your novel. 10 Opening Line Strategies, illustrated with the top 100 opening lines of [...]
I am thinking about doing NaNoWriMo this year, joining with thousands of others in trying to write 50,000 words–a novel–during the month of November. You can’t count any words written before November 1, but I know I can’t do this if I don’t work on a plot before the mad rush officially begins. So far, [...]
I wrote a first draft of a picture book this week. Except, I didn’t finish. And that’s a good thing. This often happens to me when I’m writing the first draft of a picture book or the first draft of a chapter. I write and write and write, then suddenly stop. Why stop? I’ve learned [...]
When you’re writing do you tell people what your working on or not? When I teach narrative writing, I often ask students to do prewriting activities that involve oral storytelling. Students tell about something that has actually happened to them. It’s helpful to do this because you can orally narrow down a topic, rehearse details, [...]
Celebrate Milestones of Writing This week, I finally have 1574 words done, a solid draft of Chapter 1. I’m celebrating. It’s been a struggle to get this one started. And I have a plan for what comes next, even better. Do you celebrate small steps along the way of writing and publishing your work? What’s [...]
My first draft writing is a messy process. I know–my DH tells me all the time–that I sound very left-brained about writing. Organized. Logical. Structured. And I am. BUT once I have that structure, I’m VERY right-brained.
First Drafts are Uncertain, by Nature I’m at that fragile stage of the first draft when I’m not totally committed to this story. I’m still feeling my way and haven’t yet gained confidence that I will like the story, or that my readers will like it. I’m walking on eggshells. What can I do to [...]
Searching for Plot Events I’m evaluating the outline for my WIP novel and realize that I need more events. It takes place at one big event that spans 98 hours. Within that time period, though, I need some exciting things happening. I’ve sorta mapped out the emotional changes (Wow, what a change for me!), but [...]
Time Line Helps You Plot I know that my new novel will take place over a 98 hour span of time. So, I’m working with those 98 hours, creating and structuring the time line of the story in these ways.
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