I never thought I’d be writing about thriving in National Novel Writing Month, but November 2016 changed my perspective on what I could do in my writing life. I learned the discipline of trying to write an entire novel in one month. I had had nothing but challenges trying to find a publisher for my first novel, The Renaissance Club (forthcoming January 16, 2018 from Fiery Seas Publishing). They say the best thing you can…
I post this advice from author Neil Gaiman with some trepidation, having just spent a solid twelve months fixing words that were relatively easy to draft. But it’s true, if you let your inner critic sit in your lap while you type, you’re going to get your hands and words bitten all over until there are almost no words left and no hands willing to make them appear. So in the words of Anne Lamott,…
“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” – Henry David Thoreau. When I #amwriting either prose or poetry, I first write long and thin. By that I mean a lot of words to say not as much as I will wind up with, compressed. Having just finished what I hope is the final revision of a 400-page novel, I know the meaning of short…