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50,000 Words in 30 Days — Surviving the NaNoWriMo Marathon

It was quite a thing, writing 50,000 words in 30 days. I signed up telling all my colleagues I wouldn’t cross the finish line, that I had no intention of it. I wanted to write good words, not fast and plenty words. But guess what? I have a giant competitive streak in my nature. Every day when I checked my writing buddies’ progress, a few pulled ahead, of me. It got under my skin. I…

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Day Ten of National Novel Writing Month

We’ve been doing it since before Jane Austen. Girls writing fiction. So in the 2016 National Novel Writing Month, I’m going to guess that a majority of the more than 400,000 participants this year are women. And many will go on to publish their books. Some NYT bestsellers by women that began as NaNoWriMo exercises: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill[32] The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, published…

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National Novel Writing Month — I jumped in with sisterhood

I did it. I signed up to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Partly, I did it because I’m writing a new novel, The Romantics Club, about two half-sisters who inherit a cottage in Italy and along with it, the ghost of the poet Shelley. I wanted something to distract me from two inevitabilities: death, this one my beloved brother’s; and waiting to hear about my completed manuscript, in this case from agents…

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Blog tour – writing process questions answered

Last month, I was tagged by Erica Goss to participate in a virtual blog tour of writers. The goal was to answer four questions about my current writing process. What a great exercise for inquiring into the springs of my creative life. Here are my answers. 1. What are you currently working on? A messy poetry manuscript loosely organized around the title Arabesque. Like the ballet pose and Islamic calligraphy, it dips and swerves, echoes…

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