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By the time you reach week nine of the self-publishing process, you'll already have quite a few things on your plate. So, if you've found yourself drowning in the administrative details of preparing to release your first novel, this is the point at which you really want to step back and make sure that you finish your first draft. After all, you'll want to have plenty of time for revision and editing before your publication date!
If you've been following along with this little series, then over the past few weeks, you should have: set up your website, set your personal deadlines, reached out to potential beta readers for their engagement preferences, and lightly outlined your novel. Now, you just have to keep writing.
When I was a freshman in college, I discovered Nanowrimo. Excited, I emailed my creative writing professor about mentioning it in class, thinking it might be a fun extracurricular activity for the other students. Although I didn't save her exact response, it went something like this: "Nanowrimo is silly, because there's no way a person can write anything but complete garbage if they only give themselves a month to do it." At the time, I felt ashamed and embarrassed for even suggesting something so foolish; but I've grown up a little since then, and now I know she was wrong. If you never write garbage, you never write at all.
It's December, Nanowrimo just ended, and it's cold enough to freeze the tits off a polar bear. (Although considering the impact of global warming on polar populations, that's not true anymore, and I should probably remove that colloquialism from my arsenal.) Anyways, it's cold enough that the geese are no longer floating on the lake, they're walking on it.
Whether you're participating in the official NaNoWriMo or not, November is National Novel Writing Month, and for many people, that means setting a writing goal and sticking with it. Of course, by mid-November, more than a few people have fallen off the bandwagon, or maybe even missed the boat all together.
When it comes to writing fiction, death is often inevitable. No, I don't mean writing fiction will kill you, I mean eventually, you will have to write the death of a beloved -- or despised -- character, and sometimes, your fictional fatalities will have far-reaching consequences for the rest of your novel or series.
The change of seasons is always bittersweet -- especially around the first snowfall -- and for writers especially, it's nice to have a warm beverage that matches your mood! So, in honor of the first little snow flurry (and the death of my poor garden) I've decided to share my Mom's recipe for Russian Tea.
Although we speak every day, writing believable dialogue can be surprisingly difficult. From fluidity, to speech tags, to punctuation, there are many pitfalls when it comes to annotating your characters' spoken words. Luckily, I have a few easy tricks to help you get by!
This month, hundreds of thousands of writers will sit down (or stand up, or sprawl out) and try to pump out 50,000 words in 30 days; and we call this masochism NaNoWriMo. Try to write as much as you can ... before morale fades. My Game Plan To be honest, I'm going to be a… Continue reading NaNoWriMo 2019: Ready, Set, Write!
It would be easy to swap Beowulf for Hercules (or vice versa) without really changing the integral themes of their source material; however, you'd be hard-pressed to switch Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games to Charlie from The Perks of Being a Wallflower without causing irreparable damage to the story itself. Because of this, most modern authors and readers place a great deal of emphasis on characters who are unique, relatable, and essential to the stories they inhabit.
Annelise Driscoll 