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What to do during the second draft of your book
First drafts are about getting the story down. Maybe you are working from an outline, or you are writing intuitively, but either way you are transforming a blank word document into a book-like thing. As you already know, I’m really… Continue reading
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Short Writing Sessions + Process Journal
This post is short, but I wanted to share my current process for fast drafting my newest manuscript. Before I started working on this manuscript ‘officially’, I spent about a month brainstorming various ideas for the plot and setting. I… Continue reading
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Writing while Working a Day Job
Writers love talking about their creative routines because it’s comforting to give shape and reason to what is often a mysterious and shifting process. We need a slew of tools and strategies to support us because our lives and schedules… Continue reading
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Preparing to Write a Zero Draft
I’ve started working on a new book. New books are scary; they are so open with possibilities. What’s strange about this particular book is that it’s been bouncing around in my head for, oh, ten years. I thought I knew… Continue reading
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Reading Journals for Writers
Only in the last few years have I actively kept a recording of what I am reading. This record is nothing elaborate. It is literally a numbered list I keep in my day-planner listing the title and authors I’ve read… Continue reading
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Do Not Quit Your Book
What do you do when a project starts to feel stagnate? Quit and start something new. Just kidding. Mostly. Shiny new object syndrome is most likely to strike when our creative projects slipped from being pure-play to mostly work. We… Continue reading
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How Writers Procrastinate Evolves: Stopping writing when the writing is going well
Steven Pressfield is well-known for his books about resistance, particularly in regards to writing. Resistance, as Pressfield presents it, is the internal struggle we experience every time we sit down to write. Resistance can stop us on the macro level,… Continue reading
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Writing Strategies that Work
Writing is fun. I genuinely enjoy it. There are times when I doubt the quality of my work, but I never see writing as wasted time. (To be honest, though, sometimes I wonder if there is any point in writing.… Continue reading
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Two Stages of Writing
I recently read an article by Charlotte Doyle titled, ‘The writer tells: The creative process in the writing of literary fiction,’ which closely examined the creative process of five fiction writers. Through her in-depth interviews, Doyle identified two specific patterns. … Continue reading
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Write 500 words a Day
I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s podcast, Deep Questions, and in a recent episode, he was talking about John McPhee’s habit of writing 500 words a day. John McPhee is an American, Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction writer who has written twenty-nine… Continue reading
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