As requested, this week’s post is going to be about chapters. What are chapters for and how do you go about creating them? So chapters aren’t technically required. There are a few novels that go without them, but they are the exception. Almost all novels and most novellas will use chapters of some kind. What are Chapters for Anyway? As a Reader A chapter is a breaking point, a moment to pause and step away from the book. I don’t know about you, but finishing a book chapter always gives me a feeling of accomplishment. The reverse, however, is also …Read More
Blog
7 Great Independent Bookstores And Why I Love Them
Happy October! Did you know that October is national book month? No? I didn’t either. But it’s very fitting for what I wanted to write about this week. I have a bit of a book buying problem. Like many writers and devoted readers, I love books. Holding, gazing, and even smelling them brings me great joy. I honestly just feel comforted having books around. I know I’m in a good place if there is a book or two at hand. I’ve moved a lot in my adult life, and every time I do I’m always a bit overwhelmed that at …Read More
Two Books, a Podcast, and the Beginnings of a Third Draft
Hello Friends, It’s not quite Fall yet, but it is just starting to feel like it here. Fall has always been my favorite season and it energizes me to feel the wind pick up and the cloud cover start to creep its way inland. Hooray for Fall! Writing The last time I gave you an update on my work-in-progress novel, Mulrox, I had just finished the second draft. So this week I’m going to talk a bit about my process of moving from the second to the third draft. 3rd Draft Process (So far) Read-Through and To-Do list The first …Read More
Writing Mistakes – Part II: Lack of Suspense
Welcome back to the writing mistakes series! As you may remember, last week we were talking about a short story I had written. I was excited about it until I started to read it out loud. I then discovered a few obvious problems. In this series, I am analyzing the story’s mistakes to demonstrate the importance of certain writing strategies, and hopefully to help others analyze their own work. In the first post, we looked at a brief outline of the story and how it got off track by having multiple central questions. You can read that post here: Writing …Read More
Writing Mistakes- Part I: Multiple Central questions
This week in addition to planning my edits for the third draft of Mulrox I decided I was going to write a new short story. And I was pretty happy on Saturday when I finished it. However, later that day I started to read it aloud and immediately realized it had some major problems. In this two part series of posts I’m going to outline the problems I saw with my story. I hope that by providing specific examples I can help others avoid similar mistakes. This week I’ll be looking at problems with my story question, and next week …Read More
Update 8/28/17
Project Update and Recommendations Writing Well I did it! I finished the second draft of Mulrox. Hooray! It had to push to get through it, but it’s exciting winding down a story, even if it’s only a draft. A ton of effort goes into the first ¾ of a book in order to properly set up the ending. So by the time you get to that last quarter, it’s like you are running down hill. Brandon Sanderson talks about storytelling as setting up a series of parentheses; open questions that slowly get closed out as you move to the end …Read More
Update 8/21/17
Updates, News, and Miscellany For the past few months I’ve been working on a middle-grade fantasy novel about an ogre named Mulrox, whose terrible ideas come to life. It’s an adventure story about Mulrox learning to have confidence in himself and the value of even his worst ideas. It has been a much-needed change from working on Parallax, the literary fiction novel I’ve been pounding away on for years. The new novel is action packed, whimsical, and fun. It also has the added bonus of giving me ample opportunities to write really bad rhyming poetry. Not surprisingly, it’s been a …Read More
New Writing “Updates” Blog Series
Hello Friends! I’m going to start a new series of posts that will feature updates on my current writing projects.It will delve into what I’m working on, where I am in the process, and how it’s going. Look for these posts under the category “Updates.” Thanks a bunch! Kerelyn
What’s This Book About?
The Central Question: Part 1 Whether I am analyzing a book I have read or working on a story idea of my own, I like to try to figure out how the story is structured. To figure out how a book is organized I find it useful to ask myself, what is the central question posed in this book? What is a Central Question? When I am talking about a central question I’m referring to something like a topic sentence. It might be something like will our hero defeat the evil villain and save the world? Or it could be …Read More
A Trail of Confusion: Writing Process and Misconceptions
The Burning Question Sometimes it seems as though no author interview is complete unless the writer is asked about her process. How does she write? The answer to this question is often mundane: the time of day, whether she writes at home, by hand or on a computer. This seems an odd answer, but appears both satisfactory and expected. Why is this? Why do we care about the time of day something was written? It paints a certain picture, which is interesting enough in itself, but does it account for why it crops up over and over again? I think …Read More
Flaws and All
The Nature of Learning How to Write One of the amazingly inspiring and frustrating things about writing is that it is one of those things you can work at for your entire life and still not perfect. I think this is in part due to the incredible diversity in form and purpose of stories. Stories are everywhere, in our entertainment, politics, advertisements, even in our everyday communication. The story your coworker tells you about her weekend is used for entirely different purposes than the story you tell at your job interview, which is different from the story you watch at …Read More
An Experiment
Website Goals and Objectives So this is a bit of an experiment, something new. To be honest, the idea of having much of a public presence, let alone writing a blog is a terrifying concept for me. I am a writer. I love to write. I get up early every morning and write until the rest of my life intervenes. But I do not share my writing. At least I haven’t for the last 6 years. Before that, I did. When I graduated college, I heard that in order to publish a novel I needed to publish short stories . …Read More