My First Convention Experience

A few weeks ago, I went to my first comic convention.  My artist friend Scribblefox, who I'd worked on our book Constellation with, invited me to come with her.  She had plenty of prints and stickers ready to go, but as a writer I struggled with what exactly to sell.  I ended up writing a few poems, …

A Slightly Different Direction

I have made a brave move in the marketing world. Well, not really.  All it cost me was a couple hours of my time, a touch of research, and a little bit of frustration. Wait for it.... Waaaiiiittt foor iit!!!! BOOM That's right!  I just released a coffee mug, designed specifically for writers.  My first …

The Top Seven Things I Look For When Editing

It's not enough to just say you're a 'writer.'  Most of the time, if you're really serious about what you're doing, you have to call yourself an 'editor' to some extent as well. So here's the situation:  You have written a book.  Or a short story.  Or a poem.  Or a school paper.  But what …

Drum Roll, Please

I have a confession to make.  I have not been entirely honest with you. You see, I have led you all to believe that I have been actively working on a project.  But that's simply just not true. The fact is, I have been actively working on two projects.  And I've just finished the  the second …

7 Sentences to Shock and Intrigue You

First impressions are important.  Technically, I think that either the title or the cover are the actual first impressions, but right after that is the first line of the book.  If you haven't reeled in the reader by the first line, then there's a strong chance you've lost them.  If you're lucky, they'll give you …

The Most Daunting of Edits

Last October, while looking for inspiration for the upcoming NaNoWriMo, I stumbled across a piece of writing advice that made me rethink my whole editing process. It told me to rewrite my whole book.  From scratch.  On a blank page.  Word for word. I had never done that before.  The closest I have gotten was …

Conquering the Blank Page

The blank page. The white, clean openness that must be filled before one can say they have written anything, whether it's a book, a research paper, or a blog post.  It is perhaps one of the more daunting challenges we must face. You see, after you've done all the brainstorming, outlining, necessary research, world building, …

The Best Writing Advice

When one is a writer, it is incredibly easy to get discouraged.  We look at the words we've written on either our screen or the pages of our notebooks, and we feel an overwhelming sense that what we've produced is horrible and worthless... for the eleventh time that week. In our search for answers, validation, …

The Characters of Expired

When one has written a novel, no matter what stage in editing or rewriting it is in, you are very likely to find a character or two in there amidst the typos and sentence fragments.  Most of the time, one will have a separate document with descriptions of varying levels of detail on these characters, including …

Monthly Challenges Don’t Stop After NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is officially over.  Did I win?  Yes, yes I did win.  Am I happy with what I accomplished?  Well, I am proud that I once again wrote 50k in one month, but I would have to say that I am not a fan of my own work in this particular instance. …