Pre-dawn is my time. I wake up at 4:30 a.m., french press my coffee, feed the animals, get a tall glass of water, sometimes enjoy a mandarin orange, and then do something productive. In 2018 that productive thing was go to the gym for an hour and run five miles. In 2019, that productive thing … Continue reading Wake up! Time to Query.
The eternally-wise "they" say that you get rejected 99 times before you get a buy in on your novel or submitted piece of work. But even knowing this intellectually, getting a pass on a manuscript still sucks. For me, the first couple were a particular drag. It's like getting dumped after the first date. On … Continue reading Query Rejections
After spending a few years playing around with the idea of writing fantasy (and then writing several fantasy manuscripts that I wound up shelving) I decided to go all in with contemporary YA. I knew by the first outline that I was a stronger writer in contemporary YA, I'm going to credit (blame?) my first … Continue reading Fantasy vs. Contemporary
I've spent the last three weeks off my routine and it's been driving me crazy. I've always been a morning person, preferring to go to bed early and wake up early. Even in high school and college, assignments were completed in the pre-dawn hours, and this was before I liked coffee. The ever-shifting hours of … Continue reading This Writer’s Routine
I set the rather auspicious goal of completing a totally new manuscript over winter break, which was about two weeks. I didn't start from scratch- I had a solid outline I'd been tweaking off and on for a few months and a few thousand words. I figured if I had first mess of a draft … Continue reading Goals: Achieved and Set
A little writing challenge for winter break
After a frankly exhausting series of fiction workshops, I took the summer off and did more or less nothing. I needed it, and I'm glad I did it, although I do wish I had been more productive (but if I had, it wouldn't have been a break, so...) But now, in an attempt to get … Continue reading Flash Fiction in a Flash
My family is a big believer in routines, as most humans are. My mom used to start every morning on the couch drinking a cup of hot tea and watching The Weather Channel. This was complimentary to my morning routine, which involved rolling out of bed at the last possible moment, so I regularly shouted, … Continue reading A Writer’s Routine
The day I discovered that I could run and listen to audiobooks at the same time was life changing. I subscribed to Audible that day. It's a little shameful, actually. My library's free app, Hoopla, got me started on audiobooks and I don't know why I made the switch from complimentary to an app that … Continue reading Reading the Genre
April is Camp NaNoWriMo! I have set a goal for myself of 30 hours of time spent doing writing-related things. When I set the goal, I thought that would be 100% revision time. Now that it's April 3rd and I only have a handful of chapters left to edit, I'm beginning to realize it's not … Continue reading What to do with Camp NaNoWriMo
The Merry Manuscript 