Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I’ve been busy writing other things. I’ve been so busy, in fact, that it’s been over a week since the event I wanted to talk about here: my first monthy Story Days. Story Days were my idea for carrying forward the optimism and go-hung attitude I acquired at…
Category: Story Planning
Too Many Ideas
This past weekend my sister was visiting here. I was deeply engrossed in The Hunger Games, and I remarked that one of the wonderful things about YA is that the writers have so much freedom with their premises. There is not a lot of justifying in YA, there are just wild ideas, thrilling stories, and…
Liveblogging Thursday: Character Storylines
Well, here I am, on Step Five of the Snowflake Method. Can I just say, I am loving it? Here’s the thing about the Snowflake Method: it breaks your novel up into discrete chunks you can deal with. Trust me when I say that you cannot hold the plot of your entire novel in your…
My Cute Little Problem
Adorable, isn’t she? This picture represents Koko Doyle, one of the four major characters in my book. She’s a half-Japanese, half-Irish kid, newly orphaned when the book starts. To say that she is out of place in 1929 Chicago would be putting it mildly. She is emotionally mature but socially awkward, stoic but very loving….
Liveblogging Thursday: Pretty, Pretty Snowflakes
I am still working on plans for The Big Life: The Sequel. I thought today I’d try to work few a few steps of Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method, which is a sort of well-known novel-planning guide bandied about on the interwebs. I definitely recommend clicking over and having a look, but essentially it is an…
Liveblogging Wednesday: In With The New
3:50 PM: And we have a very late start to Liveblogging Wednesday this week. Sorry about that. Today I plan to start on a new book. Not the sequel to my current book, but a whole new project, something Mark and I dreamed up during our what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to conversation last week. I’m still mostly interested in…
Ideas for the Taking
So, one of the things I’m doing while I wait for my book to find representation is organize my computer. It needs organizing in the worst way. I have all sorts of documents floating around in all sorts of folders, some of which date from the time when I still thought Courier was the only…