I’ve spent the past week toiling away on another project, and now I am back to working on Character Storylines for my sequel. There is a lot of work to be done here, but it is fun work, the kind of work that I most enjoy doing. 3:35 PM: Ok. I feel like I can…
Liveblogging Friday This Week
I know, I know, ok? I’m a cheater. But I have something I really need to work on, and I don’t really want to talk about it. Back tomorrow with lots of livebloging goodness!
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…
Saturday Funnies
If you need a laugh, check out the truly awful sentences showcased in The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. My personal favorite? Cynthia had washed her hands of Philip McIntyre – not like you wash your hands in a public restroom when everyone is watching you to see if you washed your hands but like washing your…
Liveblogging Thursday: Let’s Talk About Sex
Today I thought I would work on plans for my second novel, the sequel to the Big Life. I have a few scenes written for it, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that I need a firmer plan. Two nights ago my writing group workshopped the first couple of scenes. And we wound up having a…
Liveblogging Thursday: One Sentence
So, earlier this week I talked about tanking my first scene. I’ve spent the intervening days making necessary tweaks to chapters 1-5 to account for this lack of first scene-age, but there’s still one remaining problem. The first sentence of Scene 2 is now the first sentence of the book. And while it’s a perfectly…
Is it Wednesday Already?
Liveblogging Wednesday has been permanently relocated to Thursday, on account of my Game Night being permanently relocated to Wednesday. Now, what am I going to cook?
Comfort With Discomfort
I’m thinking today of Sons of the Wolf, a wonderful Gothic suspense by Barbara Michaels (AKA Elizabeth Peters) that I read years and years ago. I remember this one scene where the protagonist was locked in a tower, and outside her room was a large, muscular, violent dog. She needed to get out to help…