(these Boot Camps were originally posted in October 2013, but I'm bringing them out again as a refresher for NaNoWriMo #NaNoPrep 2015!) NO, I do NOT mean a GMC car!!! You don’t know what else I could possibly mean by GMC?!??! You think your characters are just bodies to occupy your awesomely fantastic setting or move through your utterly original and mind-blowing plot!???!? WRONG!!!!! WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! Failing on the CHARACTER LEVEL will make your entire book FAIL!! THAT’S ... View Post
Camp NaNoWriMo Diaries: Day Six – Whereupon I Face My Greatest Fear … Editing
Dear Diary, Yesterday was Day Six of Camp. Due to my decision to enter the Weta Nichols Writing Contest, I thought my Camp goal would switch (hopefully only shortly) to editing the first 2500 words of the first chapter (the contest's maximum limit - my first chapter is closer to 4k words, I think) in preparation for submission. The contest due date is July 15th. Not much time there. So, yesterday, I began those edits, at the standard Camp NaNo conversion rate of 1 hour of editing = 1000 ... View Post
Camp NaNoWriMo Diaries: Day Two – Wherein the Story Knows More Than I Do
Dear Diary, Yesterday was Day Two of Camp NaNoWriMo. It only took two days this time for the story to remind me it's really the one in charge. (I suppose this means I'm improving as a writer? Takes much less time these days to re-connect with the story, to get in The Zone? Well, I'll just pretend that's what it means, yes ...) Months of internal debate, wall-sized plotting and notebook scribbling devoted to trying to figure out what comes next, and all it took was the equivalent of roughly ... View Post
The Writing Process Blog Hop!
Well at long, long last, it is time for me to fulfill my duty in participating in and passing along this wonderful and superbly interesting Writing Process Blog Hop! The incredibly knowledgeable and entertaining Jumping From Cliffs was kind enough to tag me as one of his four writers, so here I go! The rules are as follows: I have to answer 4 questions, then tag 4 other brilliant bloggers to carry on the torch. And that's it! So. To the questions! 1) What are you working on? My main ... View Post
How To Get More Story Ideas (otherwise known as: How To Tap Into the Elusive "Everywhere")
If you are like most yet-to-be-published writers, you attempt to learn all you can from the successful career authors any chance you get. This often includes reading magazine articles, interviews, and online articles about them, and sometimes even traveling to who-knows-where to meet them live and in-person at some sort of writer's conference or author signing. If you have done any of the above, you know very well and good that one of the absolute most common (and most utterly annoying) ... View Post
Trial By Fire: Lessons and Habits Finally Realized and Learned in NaNoWriMo Year 2
And I thought I'd learned a lot from my first year of participation in NaNoWriMo. Pah. I confess that my transition, I feel, was a bit rockier than most in the beginning last year, likely because up until that point I had spent the previous nine years writing only fanfiction, which is a completely different beast than original fiction (and NOT just for the obvious reasons, but that's a whole different post...). It took me awhile to settle into the original fiction brain last year. But this ... View Post
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