Fiction Notes

Category: writing life

  • 8 Things Writers Do When Life is Crazy: The Crazy Writing Life

    Life has been crazy the last two weeks and I’ve struggled to keep up. There’s been a major family crisis, a funeral, major snow storms, and illnesses. In spite of all of that, people get up and go to work. Writers must do the same thing: when life throws us crazy, we spin it into […]

  • Advice to Academy Award Winners: Trust Your Art

    As I watched the Academy Awards last week, I was struck by how little the winners trusted their works of art. The ceremony was peppered with political statements for one cause or another. (Don’t misread: I have sympathies for these causes, but not for taking over the ceremony to smash us over the head with […]

  • Author v. Them: When to Revise for Critiquers

    I am scared to work on my WIP story right now. Why? Because someone I respect read the story and said that it’s working well, but I think I need to make one change–a pretty big one–to make it even stronger. But Critiquer said it was great, as is. If I mess with it, will […]

  • Is My Story Good or Bad? Wrong Question

    Last year, I did a simple survey on the list and asked writers, “What is your biggest challenge for 2015?” The answer blew me away. You want to know, “Is my picture book/novel/short story/piece of writing any good?” This was expressed in many different ways, of course, but at the core, you want to know […]

  • 3 Reasons I Failed NaNoWriMo – and Why It’s OK

    I am a failure. I signed up for NaNoWriMo–again. And again–I failed to make 50,000 words. But I have good reasons. World Building. I did massive work this month on world building. Since I’m writing a science fiction novel, I needed to invent technology, figure out where to locate installations, design the installations to meet […]

  • Momentum: Keep the Writing Coming

    You’ve started! Hurrah! Now, how do you keep going, especially when LIFE happens? As it invariably will! Stop in the Middle One strategy to keep momentum going is to stop in the middle of a sentence, paragraph, or scene. Those who recommend this suggest that you stop at an exciting moment, at a place that […]