Source It’s no secret that my creative brain works in series. Contained stories? What in the world is that? Over my lifetime I have written a number of fictional series, most you will never see. But one thing always remains the same: the approach, the feeling, and the experience of writing the first book in…
Source: Me. (A view from Gujo City, Gifu) I’ve decided to start a little weekly (or maybe bi-weekly) blogging series about life in Japan, both from an academic point and from a living-there-as-a-foreigner point. I mean, why not? It’s my major area of study since puberty, damnit. So to get a jump on some ideas…
Not much time to write out a full post today, so here’s just an easy question for all your writers out there: what are you average chapter lengths? Do you go by word count or by pages? Do you put more than one scene in a chapter or is every scene its own chapter? (Okay,…
I’ve been writing novel-length stories for well over ten years now, and during that time from reading articles in “Writer’s Digest” magazine to now trolling through blogs, it seems that the discussions on “novel lengths” has changed dramatically. But as authors we tend to see “novel length” in various lights. There’s Wordcount Length Page Length…
A day or so ago The Golden Eagle made a post in which she asked, “Would you write if you knew you’d never be published?” Of course I thought about it and subsequently replied, but my reply made me think a lot about the role of writing in my life…especially now. My reply was basically…
RUN CHILD. RUN FOR THE HORIZON. Okay. Not all of them. But my point is that I’ve noticed over the years almost all of my main characters have Absent Parent Syndrome. Specifically, Absent Mother Syndrome. Let’s break it down by series: CROSS// Danielle – Mother is (presumed) dead, father is dead, both from separate car…
I am always this beautiful when I sleep. I’m the type of person who dreams often, vividly, and with almost total recall. My dreams are usually so off the wall that friends and family enjoy a play-by-play the next morning. Just last night I dreamt I was back in high school doing one of my…
Had a fairly busy week again, but I still managed to sneak in some editing and writing time…somewhere. Anyway, I’m Chapter 8 now, and when I opened it it was 35 pages and 20k words. WELL OKAY THEN. I think that’s the record for this novel. I mean, I write long chapters as it is…
…Well, just as the subject says. I know that vast amounts of you use beta readers, but I rarely see talk about hiring professional editors (who are quite expensive, of course) before taking the self-publishing plunge. So my curiosity is going lyke w0. Feel free to say whether yes or no in the comments. Did…
Do it. I’ve been on the Ye Olde Internet for going on ten years now. While that’s not as long as a lot of “veterans” I know, I have been online since about fourteen or so, which is quite a formidable amount of my life. (Almost one half by this point, and certainly a majority…