There’s no other word for it. But after all, that’s what an antagonist is supposed to be. The one in my new novel certainly lives up to his label. Naturally, by the end of the book, he is to be found out and get his comeuppance. But so far, he isn’t cooperating. Taking him down isn’t supposed […]
By the time I recognized that I had been tying myself up in knots, I was already in a pretty tight tangle. Too happy that the narrative structure of my new story was all sorted out, I was unprepared to find that the plot structure wasn’t cooperating. The story was complete, already framed in my mind; and […]
Just as with Sparks, my second novel is in the driver’s seat and I’m just along for the ride. For months, when I’ve had spare brain cycles, I tried to figure out whether or not a portion of it should be shown in flashback. Now that finishing it is one of my main activities, I began […]
For the first ten months of the almost three years it took to write Sparks, I had only one objective – to finish writing it. Then I added blogging. I liked managing both – each cleansed my writing palette for the other. Now though, I find myself with a longer list of activities and no […]
After almost a year of disciplined, structured writing time, I find myself finished with Sparks and at a loss for what to do next. There are several more character sketches I can write. My author platform needs work. There are even a couple of short stories I can finish. I’ve two novels in the pipe […]
Warrior. That’s what the Cowardly Lion is in comparison with me last week. I’d been hiding from my manuscript since that Monday. More than one hundred pages into a four hundred page rewrite, and I choked – scared off by this one scene. I had outlined it, decomposed it, and placed its elements in my […]
It’s finally happening. I’m at the end of preparing for rewrite. I celebrated early, dancing around until I was dizzy(er). After all, this past Mardi was Gras. Inevitably, Mercredi des Cendres rolled in; bringing clarity and sobriety. I was forced to remember that though I was at an end, it merely heralded the real beginning. To […]
Hello…hello…hellooo… Where are you…are you…yooou… Echoes resounded from the void in my timeline. I’d been so focused on tightly winding the action that I’d overlooked the leap from Sunday morning to Monday morning. Sunday afternoon and evening didn’t exist. Once I’d stumbled across the hole, I saw that it should have been painfully obvious. Having […]
November 16, 2010. The day I began the revision outline for the novel that is becoming Sparks. By the very next week I knew that while an outline is a must, it doesn’t give me the level of detail that I need. So I added a storyboard to my revision artifacts, and was still confident […]
During revision, silkscreening is one thing; constructing a scene is quite another. The complexity of my current WIP makes the process more an intricate choreography than a construction. We know that the basis of scene choreography is the Holy Quarternary of writing – goal, obstacle, action and resolution. In my particular case, many scenes in the story also […]
