Book three. Is. Done. Well. Let's caveat that. It's done enough. Enough that I need to put it in someone else's hands and step away and breathe and focus. Enough that at this point, I'd be going in and tweaking and finetuning and adding details and subtracting paragraphs and not wholesale stripping out and rewriting… Continue reading Book 3: Beta Time!
Category: Writing Tips
Here We Go, Here We Go, Here We Go Again
Small human helping me plan for my deadlines. I took a brief tour down memory/blog lane and huh - looks like just about this time last year, I was also struggling with the last 1/4 of my WIP and worried to death that I wouldn't be able to make it work and my betas were… Continue reading Here We Go, Here We Go, Here We Go Again
Worldbuilding: Layers of Paint
Photo by Alice Achterhof on Unsplash For the longest time I labored under the impression that most writers sat down and spent a few weeks building their world(s) and then they were done. This notion was fueled by the way a lot of writers talk about worldbuilding, especially when it comes down to the details:… Continue reading Worldbuilding: Layers of Paint
How (Not) to Write a Novella
First, write a book. Then, realize there's a perfect part of said book that could be expanded into a short story. Sketch out a short outline. Think: this will be easy. Feel: this will be hard. Finish revising your book. Come back to the short story idea. Realize you kinda maybe need to write it… Continue reading How (Not) to Write a Novella
How to cut 20,000 Words
First - and this is the most important step - write a novel that is 35,000 words too long. Be told by several people that you really ought to cut some of that. Agonize over every word for a month and manage to cut 15,000 words. Rejoice! Realize that the novel is still 20,000 words… Continue reading How to cut 20,000 Words
Accountability and Stars
The way I've held myself accountable over the years has shifted a bit. In the very beginning, there was NaNoWriMo and its daily word count goals coupled with an awesome little graph that rose slowly, encouragingly, over the course of a month. Outside of November, I tried to replicate that beautiful graph by plunking my… Continue reading Accountability and Stars
Missing Limbs: Writing While Pregnant
I've been pretty quiet about writing around here. And that's mostly because I learned as a kid that if you got nothing good to say, you'd better say nothing. So I've said nothing, because I was also afraid of what was going on. Only now, on the other side of what I can now confidently… Continue reading Missing Limbs: Writing While Pregnant
On Wordcounts and Madness
You know those little aha! moments when a problem you've been struggling with suddenly becomes clear? And then you can't understand why it was such a problem originally? I received a passing comment on my writing while I was querying TIC that at first frustrated me. I'd mentioned my word count to another writing friend… Continue reading On Wordcounts and Madness
#Pitmad Coming Up on June 4th!
Although I have been around the internet since modems made that awful dialing noise while they connected - or rather, tried to connect - and I have been on Facebook and Livejournal and now WordPress since forever, I have had a hard time with Twitter. It's such a fleeting, ephemeral platform, where there is no… Continue reading #Pitmad Coming Up on June 4th!
27 Things I Learned While 27
(Pictured: Making Tiramisu, one of my birthday traditions.) This past weekend I leveled up in life. All the experience I've gathered by wading towards the future over the past year, one second at a time, has entitled me to cast away my age of 27 and emerge victorious at 28. Although I'm not yet certain… Continue reading 27 Things I Learned While 27
K. A. Doore 