All week, I’ve been struggling with the short story I’ve been trying to write. “Project block” is what Kris Rusch calls it — and I think that’s right. I don’t ever get writer’s block — I can always write. I get project block, though, when there’s something wrong with a project and I can’t figure […]
–I’m about one-third of the way through “Railsea” and I’m still loving it so much. –Last night I rewrote the last scene I’d done for the short story (“The Piano-Time Rag” is the name, BTW.) It was so much easier once I let the story be what it wanted to be. Which is a mystery.
Five things make a post Read More »
I need to remind myself, from time to time, just how much walking is a part of my process. There have been novels when I’ve gone for regular walks, because it was only during those walks that I could plot out the next scene/chapter/point what have you. The ideas for this novel have been coming
The walking reminder Read More »
Though I’ve written about 1200 words on the next chapter, I feel like I’m making slow progress, dithering, unfocused, not sure where I’m going. I looked at my word count and realized that if this novel is about 70,000 words long, I’m in the middle of the book. (I’m at about 28,000 words right now,
But ya’ll already knew that, right? My original plan for the year involved working on material already generated in some aspects. I was going to spend at least the first three months of the year merely rewriting. The good news is that I recognized fairly early that this was a bad idea. Within three days
I just posted the tenth story in the Baker’s Dozen challenge. Once upon a time in the kingdom of Illumignot lived the handsome King Franklin and the clever Queen Isabella. They loved each other dearly and their only wish was to have a child. After a decade of trying, the brave Prince Kyle was born.
Sunday Free Fiction! Read More »
This last week I read a couple of different posts about writing 10,000 words a day: here and here. First the caveat — this is talking about me and my writing, my process and my speed. Not comparing or disparaging anyone else. Anyway, both posts got me thinking, a lot, about my own process. I
Racing toward that final word Read More »
I tried to finish the first chapter of the novel this weekend. I didn’t succeed. I wrote between 8-9000 words this week, and I’m going to need at least another 1000 to finish off this chapter. The good news is that stuff keeps happening. In the novel as well as in my life. There were
Expanding ever outward Read More »
I’ve started the new novel, Siren’s Call. Wrote about 1500 words today — possibly more, as I kept thinking of things I’d missed and adding notes to the pages. While I’ll be keeping track of the word count myself, I’m probably not going to post it. I found myself getting too frustrated with it with
That most fragile time Read More »
While writing the last novel, I kept having to move events out. In the very, very rough outline, event A would occur in chapter 4. But more stuff kept happening to the characters and to the story that I would need to write about, and I’d be lucky to get event A into chapter 5,