A lot of my fellow writers can name an author who inspired them to become writers, or who inspire them to continue writing as adults. Neil Gaiman, Sue Grafton, Judy Blume… the names of these icons roll off their tongues without hesitation. But for me, it’s a little more complicated.
writing / editing
…Or You’ll End Up in My Novel
If you hang around authors enough, you’ll hear the phrase “be careful or you’ll end up in my novel.” Many threaten to murder, ridicule, or torture real-life people through characters who may only subtly resemble the characters in the book, but the author knows it’s them. I’ve never killed a character based on a real person—if anything I tend to base characters on people I LIKE—but I have made a few the antagonist. In Fracture, the female bully was based on a particularly lovely woman I worked with, and about two weeks ago I realized who inspired the Snow Bunnies, aka the Snow Bitches, in The Slope Rules.
The Slope Rules is Now Available for Pre-Order!
The Slope Rules comes out February 24, but is for pre-order on TODAY! Grease meets Mean Girls in this action-packed romance.
How to Persevere in the New Year
My word for the new year is persevere. I plan to continue on my current path and continue steadfastly with my writing and publication goals.
When Stars Align (for a writer)
My current wip (work in progress) is a rewrite of a women’s fiction novel that I wrote in 2008 while living in Mexico. At the time it’d been ten years since I’d lived in Michigan, and while I wasn’t planning to stay in Mexico, I also wasn’t planning to return to Michigan. So I set …
Top Ten Ways I Procrastinated During the First Week of Nano
November 1st was the first day of NaNo (read my last post if you’re not familiar) and while I’m on track with my word count (average of 1667 per day!) that doesn’t mean it’s been smooth sailing. There’s been fall cleaning (like spring cleaning but the opposite—you know what I’m talking about), a minor thing called the World Series where my second favorite team FINALLY WON, and the warmest November we’ve had in a long time, which required me to be outside as much as I can. But those don’t make my top ten list. Are you ready? Here we go!
OhNaNoMyWriMo
It’s that time of year! The leaves are turning, pumpkins are being carved, and writers across the internet are gearing up for National Novel Writing Month.
Deconstructing a Cookie
How completely overhauling a novel is like changing an oatmeal-raisin cookie to chocolate chip.
How Editing is Like Painting a Merry-Go-Round
About a month ago I decided to refinish the merry-go-round in our backyard. (Yes, it came with the house and is the kind you find on playgrounds. We also have a bouncy duck, a digger thing, and we had a 4-person teeter-totter before a drunk driver destroyed it last February.) It’d been on my long-term …
Reading While Writing
The first few years that I was writing, I was convinced that if I read novels while actively writing my own, the styles of those already-published novels would somehow leak into my writing, making it unauthentic. I saved reading as a reward for completing drafts and would binge for several weeks, gobbling up the stories I’d …