Over the last week or so, I had really gotten out of balance. Lots of distractions. Lots of drama. The end result was a seething anger that literally made me see red followed by an empty numbness. I won’t bore you with the details, but being this much out of balance really affected my writing [...]

Ha, this post is a little later than usual because I had one of those 14-hour days yesterday at the day job. And the long hours will probably continue until this problem is fixed.

So my writing took the back seat to what needed to be done.

One thing that I’ve been working on this year especially [...]

In the midst of my revisions, I’ve been reading a great craft book, A Writer’s Guide to Fiction by Elizabeth Lyon.

In the book the author talks about two particular writing methods:

Hot writing. The method of getting the first draft done as quickly as possible. Not stopping a.k.a NaNoWriMo. Overcoming the fear of the blank screen [...]

Since the chaos of my day job has settled down tremendously, I’ve been able to spend every day with my novel project.

And guess what?

The daily exposure has reaped major benefits.

Notice that I didn’t say “daily writing” — but daily exposure. This could mean looking over your chapters. It could mean creating character arcs or plot [...]

When I first started this novelist journey, I wasn’t consistent with my writing. I would go in spurts and stop literally for months at a time. I learned that for me to finish a novel and get it ready for submission, I would have to get organized.

I learned the value of making writing “to-do” lists. [...]