For the last week or so, I’ve been working on the novel I wrote in November during NaNoWriMo. Today I admitted to myself, that while effort has been expended [passive voice has been used], I’m flailing. I’ve been changing this, changing that, working obsessively on that all-important opening scene, but with very little strategy in mind. My novel’s in pretty good shape considering it was written in a month. I started at the beginning and moved through it in an orderly way. I u

As for the book itself, I’m still not sure about my title, “Plasticity.” I like it and it fits the subject matter, but it probably sells nothing. Perhaps that’s something to worry about three years from now when I’m still whipping the story into shape. Or…maybe it could be the title of the series. Hah. I know what that is. It’s my Delusions of Grandeur, which rise to the surface when I’ve just completed a first draft…of anything! Here’s my pitch: A young scientist reluctantly

The thing I’m most proud of after successfully finishing NaNoWriMo is that I made no foolish pledge to blog everyday during the month. The first five days I wanted to. It was a good feeling to complete my main course and then finish off with a little blogging dessert. But after day five, the novel filled me up. I got a lot of pleasure knowing that I hadn’t made a stupid public promise to blog the process! Now, having completed the month in fine form and having had a couple of

from Astute Graphics Today, my main character showed her character. Up to now, she’s been more self-involved and confused than anything else—for good reasons—but, that had to change. Even though she still has more questions than answers, she reached a point where she had to take a stand, to declare herself on one side of the conflict or the other. I’m proud to say that she did it unflinchingly, in a way that provides no possibility of turning back. She can’t undo what she did

Today, I could not get to The Point. I planned on writing the MC’s Fateful Decision. That point at which she makes a decision that will forever change her life and set up the action for the rest of the book. Without this, I could ramble on about the situation she’s in for chapters and chapters, but there would be no point, would there? I know what her Fateful Decision is. I know I want it to happen as soon as possible, so I was shooting for it to happen in Chapter Three, thir

photo courtesy of practicalowl Yesterday, my MC was walking home from her job, exhausted and worried, when she suddenly decided to climb a tree. They are huge trees with low, sturdy, spreading branches. Of course, she would want to throw her leg up and hoist herself into one of them! But it came as a surprise to me. It’s one of the great things about writing fiction. The surprises. See, I’d only just made up that tree. I’d thought about the setting of my novel a lot. If you

I’m speeding along at a rapid, first-draft clip, feeling on top of my writing game, when I find myself rather suddenly up against a wall. Two walls, in fact—my nose pressed up into a corner. I turn around and find the room FULL of words. The way out is on the opposite wall and I’ve just written myself into a corner. I don’t know where to go with the story and if I did, I can’t get there from here. I’m stuck in the trap of my own plot. I have what seems like too many story ele

heart words: an anti-valentine poem february 14, 2011 thump beat beat-beat-beat heart beat-beat-beat up beat-beat-beat thump lump skippity-beat beat thump red hot sweet date pump fate lub-dub respirate pump bump thumpity-hump breast beat chest bump in-flate vibrate pump-pump circulate up beat pumpity-pump ping pang pittery-pat in-spire chest fire thump-thump-thump desire bump breast ache beat stiff beat hump bump soul white heat mate pulsate palpate

quantity Some people don’t want you to know this, but writing is like most things*: the more you do it, the easier it gets. Way back in the 90’s when, for the first time in my life, I decided to take writing seriously, I signed-up for classes. One of my teachers, an assistant professor of literature at a prestigious university in the northeast US, told us, “When you start a new story, it’s always as a beginner—no matter how many stories you’ve written.” O-kay. A bit of a d