Tag: First Draft
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That’s It, Write It Down
One thing that I have learned over the years is that it can be pretty dang hard, if not impossible, to edit something that’s not yet actually written. Yeah, brilliant, I know, but for many years I wrote, trying to edit at the same time. And while typically driving me to drink, that process really…slowed…down…my…writing. […]
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A Word Is A Word, And It Counts
Yep, that’s what I tell myself. A word is a word, no matter if it’s one of one or one of thousands. And it counts the same, so if you’re tight on time and you just jot down that first word of a chapter, paragraph or conversation, it’s one more word than you’ve had […]
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Don’t Discount Those Non-Writing Achievements And Successes
Word counts. Chapters. Scenes. We all have our way of measuring our progress, don’t we? And then, when we miserably fail to reach our goal on a particular day… and we will… we label ourselves losers, failing yet again, and never wanting to chicken-peck that terrible old keyboard again. Go ahead and feel sorry for […]
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Regaining Writing Momentum After The Holi-daze
So that big push in November for writing more, especially if you participated in NaNoWriMo, led to a giant “sigh” in December, flowing right into the holidays, after which we skated into the new year. Before you knew it, you might not have written anything constructive for a couple of weeks. Sound familiar? I myself […]
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Keep Your WIP Moving With Secrets And Motivation
Keeping plot, action, and dialogue fresh can be a challenge. but Sol Stein can help you with that. Who is Sol Stein, you ask? He’s the writer of a great book on craft techniques and strategies, both fiction and nonfiction, and beyond. It’s titled, Stein On Writing. And why wouldn’t it be? He suggests to […]
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Seasons Change, And So Do I…
Well, here we are, back at that dreaded daylight savings time, or maybe a better name would be the daylight shifting time. Apparently it’s not enough that the sunlight naturally dwindles a bit each day now, because we feel theneed to manipulate our clocks to better match the lighting patterns of the sun. Shouldn’t we […]
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Hey! Who Is Gonna Take Care Of That Fictional Dog You Just Put Into Your Story?
It was an easy decision at the time. I’ll add a cute dog in my fiction. Who doesn’t like dogs, right? It’ll be a great secondary-type character to add to the story, one that will pal around and help show the emotions, attitudes and thoughts of my characters. A dog will coexist perfectly with the characters, […]
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Finding The Time To Write Usually Means Making The Time To Write
Sure, we all have the same amount of hours in the day. That’s been the retort when complaining about not finding time in the day to get some quality, uninterrupted writing done. But everyone has their own individual priorities that have to be completed, based on work, family, or even health situations. So I […]