Watching the Pages Tear

Over the summer I decided that I was going to write my current WIP by hand. It was an idea I loved and was excited for because I was having problems getting into some of the characters and into the action in Scrivener. 35,000 words in and I was frustrated and ready to give up on the story.

But I couldn’t give up. The story had consumed my mind–I dreamed about scenes, thought about the characters while I spent time with my husband and daughter, plotted out scenes when I was supposed to working. I couldn’t let the story go, but I was struggling writing. In desperation, I decided to change how I wrote. I hadn’t written a full story by hand since middle school because computers were convenient and I had more access to one in high school.

The actual process of writing became more exciting to me as I dug around in my bin of old used and unused notebooks, selecting the perfect on. It was a cheap knock off of a five-star notebook I bought at college, unused and clean pages. I had found a solution to my writing problem, a problem I had never really experienced before. Writing was always easy, even though the content was sometimes crappy; at least I was writing something. For once the ideas were great, and I just couldn’t put them on the computer, but I could put them on paper.

What I Learned from Rereading Harry Potter

my Harry Potter books collection

Once again I’ve just finished rereading Harry Potter, most of it during this past month because I’ve been doing a lot of writing. It’s also because I was gifted a new set for Christmas (the ones with the cover spines forming a picture of Hogwarts), and I wanted to break in the new books. However, I ended up reading my older copies for the last few books because they are hard cover and less likely to be destroyed by baby sitting on them.

Besides being thrown into old childhood memories of losing myself in the world of Hogwarts and Magic, I love rereading Harry Potter because I learn something new about writing each time I read them. This read through I noticed how cleanly J.K. Rowling tied new information and individual scenes into crucial events in the ending scenes of each book and even the ending conflict of the entire series. There were no random scenes in Harry Potter. Each scene and new detail sets up for the final conflict. (Spoilers Alert!)

My Writing Gratitude List

It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I’m feeling especially thankful for a few things that are writing related (especially since it’s the end of NaNoWriMo, and I’ve depended on all of these to survive the month). I’ve composed a list to share with you, my special readers and listeners to my writing related thoughts.

Writing With A Baby

a sleeping baby

With only one child I do not know the pains of writing with multiple children demanding my attention, but I do know the pains of writing with an infant.

Writing with a baby is hard.

7 Strategies for Writing Tired

For some people, writing when they’re tired awakes an inner creativity that spawns magical words. For others, writing tired is a slow torture that drains their creativity and sucks at their soul. I am of the second nature. For me, writing tired is a horrible struggle, especially at the end of a long day.