NaNoWriMo Lessons

NaNoWriMo and the Evolution of a Writer
Guest post by Beth Cato.
Follow her NaNoWriMo progress at her blog, Catch a Star if It Falls.
For years I dreamed of being a published writer, but I didn’t actually write anything. I had plenty of excuses – college, a full-time job, marriage – but I couldn’t stop that [...]

Nail Your Novel

Review of
Nail Your Novel by Roz Morris
British author and writing teacher Roz Morris has a new book out just in time to help you with that first draft of your new novel. You know, the one you’re going to write in November for National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo.
Hiccups in your [...]

First page

First Page: So much from so few words
At the AR-SCBWI fall retreat this weekend, Alexandra Penfold, Associate Editor of S&S took us through a discussion of first pages of our novel mss. She commented on the pages, then opened the discussion for other comments or questions. Here are some observations on the discussions (Note: these [...]

revision difficulties

Issues I Must Deal With in This Novel Revision
How’s your novel revision going, Darcy?
Big v. little issues. I work for a while to clarify in my mind the big structural issues, then work on a single chapter of the novel, making it fit that overall structure. But at some point,

LA retreat

The Louisiana retreat this weekend was great!
We met at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Covington, LA, which is just north of Lake Ponchitrain. It was interesting

Active Protagonists

Still working on revising my WIP novel, scene by scene. In the novel’s scene I just worked on, the main character is sitting at a school assembly. It’s an important assembly which sets up the main point of the story; however, as in most such assemblies, the action of the novel’s scene takes place on [...]

Type

Do you ever type up someone else’s picture book or a chapter from someone else’s book? I do. I find that just reading a selection, even reading aloud, doesn’t

Distance

Reading a Critique of My Novel is. . .
painful. It’s necessary. It’s helpful. But it’s painful. So, I’ve developed an avoidance strategy that helps me deal with the pain. No, I don’t avoid the critique altogether, because

Fatal Backstory

“She stopped and remembered her home town and how it felt to be ten years old when she moved. . .”
I checked out two books-on-tape yesterday and tried to listen to them. The first one started at a certain point, then immediately went into a flashback, within the first page. Ditto for the second.
Yes, these [...]

Smackdown

Do you need to revise something this month? I do! I have a MG novel that I need to go through (again!) and then send it in.

Summer Revision Smackdown: Revision Accountability
So, I’m heading over to Jolie Steckly’s and Holly Cupola’s blogs for their Summer Revision Smackdown (Powered by Licorice, Bum-glue, and You).
It’s easy.
You just post [...]