Blog

Bust your ass

J.A. Konrath has another great blog post up. (I know I link to his blog a lot, but what can I say, the guy makes sense.) In his post “Brain-Check,” Konrath lists eight instructions for writing success. They’re all good (click the link to read), but No. 8 is perfect for those of us who aren’t…
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Just TRY

I found my novel revision floundering a bit. As I said in my last blog post, I’ve been hesitating moving too far forward because I could only read five pages every two weeks at my critique group and I valued their feedback. But, I realized that if I wait for that, it’ll take a couple…
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Inspiration and pet peeves

My middle-grade novel revision is moving along, but not as quickly as I’d like. Part of the reason is that I’m editing faster than my critique group meetings. Sounds weird, I know, but I’ll explain. You see, we meet twice a month and can take up to five pages to each meeting. After each meeting,…
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Finding ideas

One of the most asked writer questions — I’d be willing to bet, but I haven’t done a formal study — must be “Where do you find your ideas?” I’ve been asked it a lot, and I’m not a well-known writer. I’d guess J.K. Rowling could feed a school-full of children for months if she…
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How to find critique groups

In my last post, Sandra asked how to find critique groups. So, here’s a quick rundown. I write for children, so I found my critique group through the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, of which I’m a member. If you write or illustrate for children and you’re not a member of SCBWI, I…
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Praise for critique groups

Being a member of a good critique group is like gold for up and coming writers. I am blessed with a great group of talented and insightful people who help me see problems or even places in my story or writing that I can do better. They push me to be the best I can…
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Getting organized

I don’t know if it’s the summer heat, the late nights or the extra day-job hours I worked last week, but getting up early to write just wasn’t happening. I resolve to do better this week, and started off with getting up at 6:30 this morning to get a bunch done. It feels good.   But,…
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Why do we write

Literary agent Nathan Bransford put up a post last week posing a hypothetical question (click here for the post): If someone could tell you the future, would you want to know if you will be published, and if you found out you wouldn’t, would you still write?   The post got a lot of people talking,…
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Chapters for a children’s book

When I was writing my middle-grade novel, I didn’t pay much attention to page counts and chapter length. Mainly, chapters were broken up by scenes.   But during my hiatus — after getting to The End — I finished reading “Barkbelly” by Cat Weatherill and was amazed at how short her chapters were and how…
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Revising from notes

At my critique group a couple of weeks ago, someone asked me what I wanted to achieve in my revision of my middle-grade novel, if I had specific things I knew I wanted to do.   During my break, I had thought about this a lot — anxious to start working on the novel again…
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