In Honor of National Novel Writing Month…

In celebration of the festival of words that is NaNoWriMo, I give you this blast from the past:

And especially for Mary Lindsey, who was hooking up words and phrases and clauses just last night…

What I’ve learned about writing a novel and trying to publish, part one.

I am admittedly an utter newbie to this whole process, so I’m no expert.
But in medicine, the philosophy is “See one. Do one. Teach one.” As soon as you learn something, you pass on the knowledge to those behind you on the learning curve.
And, you don’t find the words “Academic Director” in your title [...]

Keepin’ on Keepin’ on

So a few little things to report.
First of all, I’ve joined a critiquing website that was recommended by someone I did NaNoWriMo with a couple of months ago. And I have my first chapter up for review this week. I already have had 4 lovely reviews written– the most so far of anyone [...]

That’s It, It’s All Over!

The NaNoWriMo Contest is all over. The fifth and final Golden Ticket has been found.
The website I joined for aspiring novelists ended its wordcount contest late last night.
I finished with 66,460 words for the month of November– a nice bit over the required 50K.
I finished chapters 31 to 33 yesterday, so my book now [...]

Today I am worried…

I don’t know what it is exactly, but I am worried that my book is too darned dark.
I haven’t even revealed the worst secrets to my main character yet, and it’s already pretty awful.
How dark is too dark? When does a novel stop being entertaining and start being draining?
I hit poor Beatrice pretty hard [...]

NaNoWriMo Winner!

Well, last night just after midnight, I wrote my 50,000th words since November 1st.
Total word count for my story is over 60,000 words. Yikes!
I’m also excited because I’ve worked out my last major plot problem (I think). I’m in the middle of Chapter 26 now and would love to crank through 27 tonight, but [...]

Woo-frickin’-hoo!

So, the goal of the NaNoWriMo site is to write 50,000 words of your novel in 30 days.
NaNoWriMo starts on November 1 and goes to the 30th. It is the words I have written since NaNo started that you see in my word count. I do not count the few chapters amounting to [...]

Progression

I am learning lots of things as I continue in this quest to finish a novel.
For one thing, I have learned what a “word war” is. Essentially, it is a contest for a group of people like myself who are writing novels to compete on who can write the most words for their story [...]