Rosie: New or Old?

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m going to start Taylor-Made again.  I had already decided I was going to rewrite everything but the first chapter, change the setting, and possibly change the female lead, Rosie.  In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I decided I needed to change Rosie.  Taylor, [...]

Salvaging Your Abandoned Projects

Rhetorical question alert: Ever abandon a project, only to realize months–maybe years–later that there was some promise there after all? A lot of my early books were this way.  After the first 2000 words of AFTRLYF, I decided it was far too ambitious.  And I wasn’t that good a writer anyway.  What was I thinking?  [...]

Words with Strangers

So piggybacking off my Hanging with Friends/Words with Friends post, and continuing in the “making your words count” vein, I want to talk about my inability to write for strangers and acquaintances.  This really falls in the non-fiction category.  While what I’m talking about may not be any more formal than this blog post right [...]

Making Your Words Count (or “What I learned while Hanging with Friends”)

So when I’m not working on edits for Love Sucks, I’m playing my new obsession.  My sister and dad introduced me to the “with friends” games while I was visiting for Christmas.  Well, after getting my shiny, new iPhone, I downloaded the apps, and now I play with them all the time. The two I [...]

A Little Bit of Distance Can Be Hard

Last week I posted about how nice it was to receive edits on a novel you haven’t worked on in a while.  And it is nice from the viewpoint of not being too attached to your golden (silver… brassy… well, black and white) words.  How free of stress the suggestion to change your prose is [...]

A Little Bit of Distance Can Be Nice

This week I received my first edits for Love Sucks from my editor.  I was a little nervous, let me tell you.  I had 16 beta reads of this novel (8 before the agent R&R and 8 after), and I remembered how it felt to get notes.  Even ones I logically knew were spot on [...]

100 Book Challenge 2011 results

Oh man, from November on, I was so busy last year.  But it’s a new year and time to start posting again.  First post is looking back at 2011. Last year I took on the 100 Book Challenge again.  For those of you who don’t remember, the challenge is to read 100 MG or older [...]