Taking a break from writing to write more
“And what about those [writers' workshop] critiques, by the way? How valuable are they? Not very, in my experience, sorry. A lot of them are maddeningly vague. I love the feeling of Peter's story,someone may say. It had something... a sense of I don't know... there's a loving kind of you know... I can't exactly describe it.... … Continue reading When Are Workshops Helpful?
Despite literally doing social media for a living, I am missing out on an entire writing community on Twitter. I tend to tweet and provide social media for brands and spend little to no time on my own social media. That means my personal branding is limping along. At the urging of a friend, I … Continue reading #WritingHashtags
This weekend, I planned, booked, and paid for two weeks away from my house. I am very fortunate to have an employer with very generous leave policies and I don't gain anything from not taking allotted time off, so I'm resolved to use all of it this year. The first trip is my elopement/honeymoon. My … Continue reading A Tale of Two Vacations
I've been struggling lately with my manuscript, Hot Mess #1. I made a bit of a breakthrough last night, but I didn't do anything in December and January has been a slow start. My laundry list of excuses includes: Several instances of snow, which somehow made it impossible to write. Illness, where I spent several … Continue reading Level 3 Writer, Level 34 Human
When I was a teen, I had a habit of getting books I loved, reading them, then leaving them all over the house so I could pick them up and read them at all times. My mother loved finding paperbacks strewn across the kitchen table, between couch cushions, even by the toilet. There was a … Continue reading Jean Ferris Is Dead
Happy New Year! Today I am going to share with you my writing goals for the first quarter of the year. I use a goals journal called the "Best Self" journal. Browse and get excited about it by clicking here. Basically it takes the premise of "time blocking," or scheduling out every hour of the … Continue reading Writing Resolutions
So many wonderful things came out of November this year! My second novel, which I loving call Hot Mess #2, is done! Well... okay the plot is complete. I'll probably spend months on rewrites and additions. Weekly write-ins that I facilitated at a local writing center are now going year-round. They're starting up again in … Continue reading Life After NaNo
The whole point of NaNoWriMo was to finish the second novel. I didn't have to start from scratch, I had a decent head start over 10,000 words, but it was still a push. I had days where I wrote a hell of a lot. I had days where I wrote zero. Today I finished. Because … Continue reading Done with NaNoWriMo
Yesterday was a bad day. Today is shaping up to be a bad day. It's not the persistent, nagging slow burn of depression or grief, it's just several bad days where things just happen that suck. My trainer quit, for example. I had some family drama to deal with. And my beloved manuscript earned its … Continue reading When crappy days derail NaNoWriMo
Let me start out by saying the "meh" doesn't have to do with the story. It's all about the number of words. In fact, I am in love with my story. I had to stop writing earlier than usual today because I needed to vote before work (go vote, people!) and as I was putting … Continue reading One Week, 8,968 words, Meh.
The Merry Manuscript 