I’m 1.5 chapters into Illona Andrews’ book Iron and Magic and I’m already finding it to be 10 times better than the cozy mystery I’m half-way through. The characters are stronger and because of that the world feels more real (and the Andrews’ book is a fantasy while the cozy takes place in present day…Continue reading Great vs. Good Writing
Category: Fiction Writing
It’s a Draft!
It’s been more than a week and I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I finished an actual draft of a book. 70,000+ words — some of them well written, and some thrown blindly at the page in hopes that the round 2 edit can actually make this into something good…Continue reading It’s a Draft!
Copyright, Stolen Work, and Angry Authors
If you keep up with Writer Twitter (the area of twitter posts dominated by #amwriting and similar hashtags) you know about the latest upset about a Kindle author who plagiarized a whole group of romance writers, and used ghost writers to whack the stolen passages into a single (bad) book. Or more than one book,…Continue reading Copyright, Stolen Work, and Angry Authors
Author Life Month
There’s a February challenge over on Twitter that I’m going to try to do. And I may just try to post here as well (depending on time constraints). It’s called the Author Life Month. I’m not getting writing done (at all) so I’m going to see if this inspires me.
Forgotten Flash Fiction story
A Flash Fiction challenge was offered on June 2 by the TerribleMinds blog (filled with the entertaining wordspewings of author Chuck Wendig) and it tickled my fancy, so I wrote something then and there. And then immediately forgot I wrote it until I stumbled over it yesterday (June 18), long after the challenge had ended.…Continue reading Forgotten Flash Fiction story
My Contest Entry: James Patterson Masterclass
I was given the James Patterson writing Masterclass for Christmas, and enjoyed the class. Part of the class involved a contest to become a co-writer on a James Patterson book, and a lot of people took a stab at it — including me! Since the 10 semi-finalists have been announced and I’m not one of…Continue reading My Contest Entry: James Patterson Masterclass
Worldbuilding and naming
There was an interesting discussion in one of my Facebook writing groups today, about whether a fantasy novel needs to call a horse a horse or come up with all new beasts and names. The original poster wanted to know if it was OK to use Earth animals rather than coming up with her own.…Continue reading Worldbuilding and naming
2016 NaNoWriMo: concept development and worldbuilding
Another interesting bit of conceptual development from the NaNo worldbuilding forum. 1. What is valued most in your Society? (Money, Family, Love, etc.) Tesh (my main character) isn’t sure what her people value since she’s lost her memory; as the story progresses she realizes she values independence and knowledge. The La’an race values their Goddess,…Continue reading 2016 NaNoWriMo: concept development and worldbuilding
2016 Nanowrimo plot post
This year I stumbled on thread on the NaNo forums where you were challenged to write your plot like a Pixar plot summary. The Pixar pitch goes like this: 1. Once upon a time there was … 2. Every day … 3. One day … 4. Because of that … 5. Because of that ……Continue reading 2016 Nanowrimo plot post