Feeling stuck is your brain’s way of telling you there’s something you’re missing. It’s a red flag. A flashing light. A clue to slow down and start thinking. Carefully. One of the best ways to think is through brainstorming. Getting up, getting a marker, and writing things down on the whiteboard. Some people use clustering […]

I polished up my query for Clean on Friday to send out to agents in the next few weeks. Like a good girl, I got a couple of talented other writers to take a look at it and give me feedback. I got the usual responses, mostly making me clarify my thoughts (thanks guys) but […]

After a weekend (and Monday) of taking care of other people’s problems, I tried to hit the ground running on Tuesday. I hit the ground alright – straight into an inconveniently-located telephone pole, and fell, staring up at the stars, wondering why I had only written four hundred-odd words. NaNo organizers claim that Week Two […]

Which makes me think, how does this apply to my life? How can I connect better? What things can all of us do to make that leap to meet our audience’s needs? It’s easy to start with yourself. It’s better to start (or at least, finish) with your audience.

Instead of working on NaNo like a good girl today, I went to the Red Clay Writer’s Conference at KSU. I learned a lot (more on the conference later), but in the last session my phone started vibrating. Even on “quiet”, the thing was loud, so I popped it out of my bag and hit […]

I went running with my dad a few weeks ago. Or, more accurately, we did intervals on the nature paths close to his house. I learned two things that day. One, it’s a lot harder to run on an uneven nature path than it is to run on a flat street (my ankle muscles were […]

For the first year ever, I’m officially doing National November Novel Writing Month. I’m using the system to write 50,000 words (hopefully) in a month and complete a novel that’s been sitting half-done on a shelf for a couple of years. Today I went over all my outlines and character exercises, read all the old […]

I think I’ve mentioned that I’m secretly a science nerd. Not in the sense that I spend hours standing over beakers and chemical solutions and not in the sense of journeying through the Amazon jungle to identify new species. No, I’m more of the armchair science girl, watching the play-by-plays and predicting what’s going to […]