If you haven’t been reading Ava Jae’s blog, this is a great time to start. Ava posted a great piece on what it takes to finish writing your novel, a struggle every novelist knows all too well. One passage in particular from Ava’s piece stuck out to me: You need to understand that if you [...]
Writing Criticism: Taking It Gracefully
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Criticism! So you’ve finally done it. You’ve completed your writing project. Your baby. The Story You’ve Always Wanted to Tell. And now you’ve put your writing in the hands of your loving beta-readers or peer editors for perusal. Breathlessly, you await their criticism, craving the keen insight they will no doubt bring to your – [...]
Writing Your Rough Draft: The Show Must Go On
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Many years ago, I attended a showing of The Phantom of the Opera. What does that have to do with writing motivation and your rough draft? Stick with me. If you’ve ever seen the play, you’re familiar with that bit where the Phantom bellows out the final verse of “The Music of the Night” and [...]
Advice From Every Side
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A short one today. Even the most well-meaning friend can unwittingly undermine you with a destructive or demoralizing piece of advice — even when it’s technically sound. By way of example: I recently started passing around a fantasy novella I’ve been working on to some beta readers, with the intent of releasing it for free [...]
Momentum and the War of Art
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Today, I want to talk about momentum. If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed the three-week silence. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say — I just couldn’t seem to get around to saying it, and the longer I waited, the more difficult it became. In short, there’s a reason nearly [...]
Promises, Promises
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“In order to dare we must know; in order to will, we must dare; we must will to possess empire and to reign we must be silent.” -Eliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic I used to be a big old planner and maker of promises. Now by “plan” Of course, I don’t actually mean plan, I mean [...]
ROW80 Check-In 11/6/11: Acknowledgement and Acceptance of Terms
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Last time I updated, I talked about how tracking goals was the key to meeting them consistently. Then I went ahead and ignored my own advice, and just sort of blundered through the week. Work issues made writing difficult, but I don’t want to get in the habit of falling back on excuses. It made [...]
ROW80 Check-In, 10/23/11: Limitations, Realizations and Breakthroughs
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The days preceding this check-in brought some revelatory highs and lows. On Friday, I found myself at my desk nearly in tears from frustration, realizing that I’d seriously overextended myself, not just in terms of my ROW80 goals, but my life in general. There are some work stresses and life issues that lie beyond the [...]
Goals, Deadlines and Dead Men
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On Wednesday, I ran into the problem that plagues all public writing events: the dreaded realization that I’d bitten off more than I could choke down my already-packed writing schedule. And its sister realization: I will need to scale back my goals. By admitting it publicly. I could imagine the cheers and boos at my [...]
ROW80 Check-In, 10/16/11: Falling Off the Wagon
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I fell off the ROW80 wagon between Wednesday and today. Thursday and Friday were eaten up with work. Saturday, I lazed. So far today, I’ve spent a couple of hours staring at a blanks screen. I literally have nothing to show for the remainder of this week, and that’s rather deeply embarrassing. So I’m going [...]
