Category: Writing Fiction

  • The Summer of Fiction Writing EVENT at HollysWritingClasses.com

    The Summer of Fiction Writing EVENT at HollysWritingClasses.com

    To help writers beat the summer doldrums, I’m going to be hosting a Summer of Fiction Writing event on HollysWritingClasses.com (HWC). During this three-month writing party, (June 1st – August 31st) folks in the free HCW writers’ community: Will focus on helping newer writers create smaller start-to-finish projects written in the months of June, July,…

  • Dead Man’s Party: Finished the novel first draft

    Dead Man’s Party: Finished the novel first draft

    I finished another novel today — this one pretty much on schedule. I’d planned it for 50,000 words, and came in at 50,085. Wrote 1847 words in a smidge over a hour to get there. I got a GOOD ending for the novel. Most of the time, great endings are something I build in revision,…

  • The Ohio Series: TGIF, and the magic digs deeper

    The Ohio Series: TGIF, and the magic digs deeper

    I made myself cry three times today in the couple hours I was writing my 2056 words. I’m connecting deeply with the magic of a real and remembered place — with a town I loved, with a time I recall with a lot of powerful emotions. I’m dealing with my connection to this story with…

  • The Ohio Series: 1977 words, with Tori and the snake in the canoe

    The Ohio Series: 1977 words, with Tori and the snake in the canoe

    Fun, fun fiction writing day today. My heroine, Tori Gage, is in Ohio now, in the house she inherited from her grandma, and she’s just started doing the rounds — and has started in the basement. Where there are three freezers, one with meat, one with home-grown vegetables, and one with a lock and no…

  • The Ohio Series: Taking the measure of a novel

    The Ohio Series: Taking the measure of a novel

    Yesterday was Marketing Day, and I got the first half of the 4th edition of Create a Plot Clinic finished. Next week if all goes well I’ll finish and do a new cover, and take that class live and wide. Today, I worked for several hours, and got 1010 words of the 2000 I’d planned.…

  • The Ohio Series: Worldbuilding toward getting the right magic

    The Ohio Series: Worldbuilding toward getting the right magic

    I had a net gain today of 1131 words, but wrote a lot more than that. Matt and I spent a couple hours talking worldbuilding and characters last night, and I made a bunch of changes and did a lot of rethinking this morning. Short post today — four hours of writing and developing, classwork,…

  • The Ohio Series: Writing this one works differently

    The Ohio Series: Writing this one works differently

    I mentioned that I’m going to have a different pseudonym for the Ohio series books (and I have real titles and a real series title for this project) — but all of that is staying under wraps until after I start bringing out the books and letting them find their readers. But this is an…

  • The Ohio Series, Book One, and The Emerald Sun planning

    The Ohio Series, Book One, and The Emerald Sun planning

    I’ve spent the weekend and the last couple of days trying to figure out my writing schedule. I ran out of The Wishbone Conspiracy before I planned too, and that has to sit in a corner being quiet for a month, resting and getting cold so I can get an objective look at it when…

  • Dead Man’s Party: 1178 words today, some nice tension, and just three chapters left

    Dead Man’s Party: 1178 words today, some nice tension, and just three chapters left

    I got my words this morning in three ten-minute runs — and I love what I got. I ran a smidge over my goal, but that’s okay. This scene was a short, tight run through the third of four scenes that are occurring simultaneously in the novel as my characters go tearing toward the ending.…

  • The Wishbone Conspiracy: Accidentally finished the novel today

    The Wishbone Conspiracy: Accidentally finished the novel today

    This is awkward. You have plans when you’re writing a novel, you know what you’re writing toward, you’re moving along at your planned pace, doing your planned scenes, and you start writing a scene you know was coming and have been looking forward to writing… And your MUSE shows you a character you have been…