I was doing some thinking for all of you about NaNo milestones using the 7 point plot structure. My idea is to give you dates and word counts that you need to hit on those dates. Of course this would be a rough guide more than a rule … More NaNoWriMo & the 7 Point Plot Structure
Today, I took myself to a cafe to do not much in particular. I sat at a wobbly table in the back – the only seating available on a chill fall day – and let my mind wander as I listened to the comforting white noise of people typing, conversations, music I could barely make … More Cultivating Creativity with Boredom
So you want to do NaNoWriMo, but you’re not really good at this plot thing. Maybe you’ve written short stories but not a novel, maybe you’ve always wanted to write a novel, but you don’t have any idea of how to make a plot. Maybe you’ve written or are writing your Good Novel Idea, and … More NaNoWriMo Prep: Creating A Plot in 4 Easy Steps
We are only fourteen days away from National Novel Writing Month, and the internet is becoming abuzz with the yearly questions: Will I or Won’t I? I don’t Know What to Write! I Never Get Past 30 Thousand Words! So much worry. And as an old martial arts teacher once liked to say: Worry is … More Dealing With Pre-NaNoWriMo Anxiety: 5 things to do instead of freaking out
Sometimes shit happens. Generally, it happens right after a commitment, or a recommitment. Shit likes to hide off to the side, waiting until the right time to strike and derail us. Sometimes, very often, the derailment works. The trick isn’t to power through it, or to stick it out, or to beat ourselves up for … More Sometimes Shit Happens
Over time, I've often been asked a lot to talk about my writing process – the nuts and bolts of what I do when I sit down to write. And so far, I've resisted doing so, partly because I don't really know if I have a writing process, and partly because its a very self-conscious … More My Writing Process (with pictures)
We hear about how zombies are over and how fairy tales are in, we hear about agents and we worry about if we can one day sell the thing we have scarcely typed five paragraphs of. We ought never end a sentence with the word of. Or to. Or with. We think we should write … More Month Twelve Reflections: Write What You Write
It’s me again, taking over so you don’t have to. A lot has happened in the last couple weeks, but we’re now 18 days and some change into November, just a smidge past halfway. If you multiply 18 days (and some change) by the Golden Ratio (1.618, a.k.a. “Phi”, a.k.a. “ϕ”), you get 30, or … More Guest Post: Embracing Incoherence (or, Rambling for Focus)
Choose your priorities. Seriously, choose them now. Because whatever you don't choose will fall by the wayside in November. Sleep, nutrition, diets, housework, and laundry are always the first to go. Then comes the little things, like email and responding to comments on our blogs, if we manage to blog at all. Facebook becomes a … More NaNoWriMo Prep: Choose What Balls To Drop
This approach is for the kind of stuck that just keeps us from writing anything at all, even a small practice piece or blog, when words simply won't come and we are left feeling empty and alone, abandoned at the start, and we are lost and frozen in space, searching for he brilliance we are … More Unstuck: What to Write When You Don’t Know What to Write – Write Reality
Concerning History in the Atlantic World, 1680-1740
The long haul of the spectrum
one woman's thoughts about life on the spectrum
Japanese pop culture through a feminist lens
The official blog of Michelle Tuckett, word ninja. 