I’m a sub-par writer. Always have been. And I’m totally cool with saying that because, well, for one thing it’s true. But I’ve also learned that it’s not how well you write that makes you a good writer. It’s how…
As often as Show, Don’t Tell is drummed into us, it’s not always clear how to do it. Telling is sometimes necessary, even desirable in a sprawling novel, and the impulse to perform corrective showing can lead to page-count creep…
It wasn’t until I joined in National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) a few years ago that I finished a full draft of a novel for the first time. For anyone unfamiliar with Nanowrimo, it’s a national challenge to write a 50,000…
The New Years resolution at the top of my list is to finish The Black Sea, my novel in progress. And not just to finish it but to wrap it up in two to three months. Admittedly some of my…
So, First Draft, we meet again. I just finished your brother a few weeks ago and stuck him in a (virtual) drawer. Don’t worry. You’re definitely meeting the same fate. Oh, stop screaming. Doesn’t the certainty of what’s going to…
I had written twenty, maybe thirty, pages of my first draft when I had the idea of setting the climax at a theme party. I thought it would be fun to put my characters into costumes and get them in…