Category: WRITING CLASSES

  • YESTERDAY’s work… finished Lesson 5 of the new Big Writing Course…

    YESTERDAY’s work… finished Lesson 5 of the new Big Writing Course…

    Got my fiction first TODAY — had to toss a bit of the most recent scene, came in with new words, and even came out a bit ahead. Came out with a net gain of 148 words. Not what I’d hoped for, but I’m glad to be getting fiction. And the RETHINK part of the…

  • Secret Big Class: Day 2

    Secret Big Class: Day 2

    Today’s objective was 1000 words on Ohio 4, and both starting and finishing Secret Writing Class Worksheet #1. It always amazes me how much harder it is to build a worksheet than to write the actual lesson it supports. It also amazes me that I forget this fact. I decided to do the worksheet before…

  • The Secret Big Course For Writers and DAY ONE: 4769 words

    The Secret Big Course For Writers and DAY ONE: 4769 words

    Yeah, I went big today. BIG IN A LOT OF WAYS. Have spent the last few weeks after getting my fiction words secretly outlining this Fiction-Writing Big Course, and building out my lesson blanks for the class. Today I wrote Secret Writing Class Lesson One, and got all the words for it (at least in…

  • The Other Shoe Dropped — Ohio 4 and the Friday “Say WHAT?!”

    The Other Shoe Dropped — Ohio 4 and the Friday “Say WHAT?!”

    In the first version of these novels, I had one main character who I was having do a lot of chasing around because my main character was being stubbornly stupid about an activity that was bad for her — except she refused to see it. I made her smarter. And because she stopped doing stubbornly…

  • Ohio 3 is now done in first draft!

    Ohio 3 is now done in first draft!

    57,841 words total. I like the story. I love the ending. And now the novel gets to sit quietly for a while as I plot the replacement Ohio 4. In revision, it will probably get a bit longer. Most of my stuff does. Based on some very good advice, I am, however, now considering doing…

  • Evil Afoot — 2077 words, and I got a nice bit of a cliffhanger at the end

    Evil Afoot — 2077 words, and I got a nice bit of a cliffhanger at the end

    Very pleased with the nasty situation in which I’ve dumped my MC — she’s going to have a rough rest of the week, too. Evil is a foot (it left its footprint all over everydamnthing, in fact…) and my MC is in the process of using what she discovered to lead the bad guys into…

  • A tricky bit to figure out for tomorrow… BUT done for today.

    A tricky bit to figure out for tomorrow… BUT done for today.

    Tomorrow my MC has to figure out how to contact (and then rescue) someone important trapped behind enemy lines without breaking the rules that forbid her from having any contact with the enemy. I already know how she’s going to do this. I just need to figure out how to make it smooth, and clean,…

  • Today was SOLID — and eventful: 2121 words, and 51,559 total

    Today was SOLID — and eventful: 2121 words, and 51,559 total

    I’m over the hump and heading toward the ending now, and today’s scene and tomorrow’s scene are dark, and pretty scary for my MC and her folks, with a massive chance of things going so wrong that she could — with just one mistake — lose everything she has come to love (and not just…

  • Ohio 3, and the Shoe-Drop Moment

    Ohio 3, and the Shoe-Drop Moment

    There’s the “make yourself cry” moment, and there was some of that today. I did, indeed, make myself cry. Again. There was a bit of making myself laugh. There was giving my character one moment I would take in a heartbeat if someone could just stop the world and roll back time. And there was…

  • Today was BIG… good words, but also landed a huge PIVOT scene

    Today was BIG… good words, but also landed a huge PIVOT scene

    And made myself cry. That might not seem like a big deal. But this was a crucial scene in the book in which my MC has just come through an massive ordeal, and found one moment in time in which she got to say goodbye to her person in the world — the one who’d…