In life, I’m inseparable from my cell phone, but when it comes to writing, there is one program I can no longer function without: Scrivener. I love this program to bits. I’m a non-sequential writer, and I spent the first ten years or so of my writing life struggling with endless Word docs. This goes back to the days when a full manuscript wouldn’t all fit on one 3.5″ disk…
I totally forgot to write my blog post yesterday. This isn’t a bit. I was distracted by life and day job and eight million other things and totally freaking spaced. So definitely listen to what I’m about to tell you. Writing has never been an act of perfection for me. I write messy first drafts and carve moments out of my life wherever I can find them to get words…
It’s fortuitous that this topic falls here, at the end of November, as I’ve spent the past 26 days frantically drafting Book 2 of the Aven Cycle as my NaNoWriMo project (with intermittent work on two other projects at the same time). It’s also a bit unfortuitous — I’ve been so busy drafting that I haven’t had a lot of time to think about how I draft. What leaps to…
Happy Friday the 13th! And in October, too! Spoopy! This week we’re talking about creativity. Where do we find it? How do we cultivate it? How do we hang onto it? This week we’re talking about creativity. Where do we find it? How do we cultivate it? How do we hang onto it? I’m having a rough week, y’all. For the last year and a half or so I’ve been…
For this week’s theme, the Debs are sharing the love and discussing five people without whom our books wouldn’t exist. I use “five” a little loosely — but here goes: My family: I mean, this almost seems too easy, but I couldn’t start anywhere else. My parents have supported my dreams of writing for as long as I’ve had them. They knew I’d be good at it before I did. (My…
Caged Eyes may have taken me a decade to write, but I can summarize the process easily: expand and contract. My first draft was a factual recount, a straight linear narrative one might read in some kind of textbook. It made for a terrible memoir, I assure you. Over several additional drafts, I went to the opposite extreme. I added details, dialogue, and reflection, and suddenly my memoir doubled in…
I’m going to finish my second book this year. No, really, I will. Yes, I’m serious. Yes, I said that last year. Yeah, okay, I said that the year before. It’s different this time. Some days I’m frustrated with myself that yet another year has passed and I haven’t finished my follow-up memoir, the recovery half of my story, the story of how climbing Colorado’s highest peaks helped me…
This week we’re discussing writing through distraction, and I thought I’d put my memoirist’s spin on the topic: writing through trauma, which is, in a way, very similar. The heart of succumbing to distraction often comes down to avoidance, and it just so happens that avoidance is also a key component of post-traumatic stress disorder. Those with PTSD sometimes go to extreme lengths to avoid situations that remind them of the…
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about that lady, it’s that she tends to blame others for her inability to focus. The truth is she can’t concentrate for shit. I’m just being honest. Between the noise in her head and the noise out there in the world, distractions are a big problem for her. But instead of taking responsibility for it (or medication), she blames everything on me and my…
In the spirit of election week (have you voted yet?) this week’s Deb topic is about big decisions we’ve made as writers. I watched Ann Patchett speak a few years ago and something that she said really stuck with me. I don’t recall her exact words but essentially she said that a profession as a writer was the hardest thing you could ever choose to do. Let me elaborate: You…
