Backstory surprises

January 3, 2012

Since I got behind working on my latest novel, I had to go back to the beginning to put myself in the right place, so to speak. But that turned out to be good for the book because I “learned” some interesting facts about Rita (the main character) in the process.

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In the end, what else is there but writing…

December 11, 2011

Words of inspiration from Alec Baldwin… Early this morning (6 AM to be exact), I watched a rerun of Inside the Actors Studio. It’s one of my favorite shows, in part because James Lipton is such a great interviewer — I pick up pointers from watching him that I use when I interview people for [...]

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Taking tips from Elizabeth George

December 7, 2011

I’ve been reading my way (again? still?) through Elizabeth George’s excellent fiction writing book, Write Away while I work on Reinventing Rita. I’m trying to resist the temptation to go “full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes” because, while that works well for me when doing short fiction, it doesn’t work so well on novels. [...]

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Update on Reinventing Rita and writing in general

November 19, 2011

I’m really behind posting on this blog, in part because I have finally found my way on my current project and didn’t want to jinx it. But now that I am almost at 20,000 words, and have a sense of what is coming next (although the specifics and details that surface during the writing process [...]

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Back in the saddle again…

October 22, 2011

Back and forth … One minute I am sticking to my 30-minute a day routine, the next I throw it out the window because of — what? Fear? Probably. Then, of all people, I was inspired by Ashton Kutchen

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Excuses, excuses…or the penalties of avoiding writing

August 14, 2011

So it’s been a few weeks since I did my required 30 minutes-a-day fiction writing session. Oh, I had reasons of course:

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The Benefit of Taking a Break

July 24, 2011

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had decided to take a break from Rita. It had become one of those cases where, the more I tried to fix what was wrong, the more cracks appeared.

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Reading, not writing—in search of answers or encouragement

July 17, 2011

I’ve been reading Margaret Atwood’s Negotiating with the Dead—A Writer on Writing. It’s one of my favorite writing books (it never makes it off my nightstand and back into the bookshelf in my office!), and right now it is helping me feel much better about my current level of frustration.

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Time for a (novel) break

July 6, 2011

I finally finished Reinventing Rita — or rather, version 7 of it. When I finished Finding Fran, it was with a sense of satisfaction, but with this one, I am even more aware of how much needs to be revised, edited and changed. But I can’t deal with it now. I need a break from [...]

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Fighting my writing fears

July 3, 2011

In honor of “Declare Your Freedom From Fear” Week, I have decided to list my top 5 fiction writing fears, hoping that by putting them down on paper I will be able to conquer them—or at least figure out how to fix them! Fear #1: That the characters in my novels aren’t interesting enough to [...]

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