Wild Magic. Wild Stories. Wild Souls.
This week turned out to be a wonderfully productive week. I wrote 4,429 words in a new story, Bewitched by the Dragon, and wrote a 4,678-word short story, Upon the Witching Hour, a retelling of Cinderella (but with a twist). I also wrote and posted my first Insecure Writers Support Group post, and am finding […]
Read MoreAs writers, we think a lot about point of view. Sometimes our genre dictates what POV we use, although even within a genre we can use our own creativity. Yasmine Galenorn writes paranormal romance that’s first person, unusual for the romance genre where third person is often used. YA often calls for first person, although […]
Read MoreWhile studying creative writing in undergraduate and grad school, I participated in countless writing workshops. I’ve been a member of critique groups and read countless writing books. But there’s one thing I’ve only recently come to realize: Sometimes people’s writing advice is bad. Well, let me clarify. It’s not necessarily bad advice. It’s just bad […]
Read MoreFor the time being, I have given up pantsing. It’s only been successful for me with a handful of short stories (around the 5K mark). With longer books, I end up with first drafts that either go unfinished and languish in a drawer somewhere, or first drafts that are a pile of mush, plot-wise, and […]
Read MoreIt’s no secret that I have a lot of WIPs. So many that at times it makes my head spin. Sometimes I’ll write a few pages of a story and realize that it’s not going anywhere, and I’m okay with setting those stories aside indefinitely. But I have a number of projects begging for revision, […]
Read MoreIf you’re a writer, this battle rages in your psyche on a regular basis. The creative, who makes these huge intuitive leaps and brings stories into this world from out of the ether. The creative, who makes something out of nothing, splashes of ink on a once blank page, seeming to spin straw into gold. […]
Read MoreYeah, that’s how I’ve been feeling these past few weeks. I am super-excited to be launching an indie career over the next few months. I’ve been writing professionally since 2008, and my first two works of fiction will go live on September 6. That means lots of research. Over the years I’ve read my fair […]
Read MoreIt started as a niggling feeling in the back of my mind, like an earthworm tunneling through the soil: You don’t know how to fix this story. And then it grew, like a python squeezing me, making it hard to breathe: You cannot write a novel. It’s too big, too many moving parts. Sigh. It’s […]
Read MoreI’ve been grappling with story structure as of late. Larry Brooks’s discussion of structure in Story Engineering opened my eyes to the fact that I need to pay more attention to this aspect of my writing—and made me realize that I either need to do some story planning or wrestle my stories into structure in […]
Read MoreI’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’ve started writing at night. I used to write in the afternoon, and I was managing somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 words a day. Not bad. But I wanted to aim higher. Since I’m naturally a night person, and since I can’t fall asleep until 3 a.m. anyway, I […]
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Denise D. Young 