To plot, or not to plot? It’s the perennial question writers everywhere eventually face. The internet is rife with articles waxing poetic about the virtues of Plotting vs. Pantsing. It’s the Empire vs. Rebellion of the writing world. Do you plan out your story before you write? Then you’re a Plotter. Do you let the muse guide you along the journey without a plan, or maybe with an end-point in…
We’re sharing our best writing tips this month here on The Debutante Ball, and since this happens to coincide with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo or NaNo for short), I thought I’d tailor my advice for the NaNo folks out there. November is quickly running out and for many writers it’s make or break time. So what do you do if you still have 10-20k left on your word count…
There is quite a bit that was shed from the original manuscript of The Goddess Twins to what has resulted in the published version that’s available today. When I was writing this story, I worked off of an outline, and even from the outline there are things that shifted and changed. I have found that the writing process can be like finding your way through a labyrinth. I am grateful…
When I was in my undergrad program for fashion, I took my very first writing gig blogging for a recently launched menswear site. I remember applying and being so excited when I was chosen! I felt so official with this, my first fashion writing gig. But I was super nervous upon accepting the position. I realized, my name would be “out there” and what if people didn’t like the content…
In 2009, I left my job as a high school English teacher and ran right smack dab into the Great Recession. It hurt. Nobody was hiring. I couldn’t get an interview, much less a job. After a few months of false starts and throwing myself at the wall, I harnessed what was left of my entrepreneurial spirit and started a wedding videography business. Wedding videography was something I had done…
Missing my poetry-mom Lucille Clifton especially today. Here she is reading aloud a poem of hers that I love. Until I got to graduate school, until I got to the people who would become my writing family and my writing community, I wasn’t encouraged much by my peer set in creative writing classes. Especially while I lived and worked in the Deep South. I always felt out of place, out of…
I spent a fair amount of my youth writing dense, novel-length, & character-driven fanfiction (henceforth referred to as fanfic) until 1am on a school night. After all my homework was done, of course. My fandoms were primarily Sailor Moon and Harry Potter, the former being the one I really dove into. And it was, perhaps, the best crash course in writing money could’ve bought me. So for the newbie writer,…
The above quote from the inestimable Neil Gaiman is a lot of why I’ve had beta readers since my fanfic days, but have never had a dedicated critique partner in another writer, at least not since leaving school. Writers have a much, much harder time resisting the urge to say how we would do something — which is not always helpful when talking to another writer. I think it can…
Our topic this week is first drafts, and let’s be honest: I am not a trained writer. I don’t have an MFA or a background in journalism or even an English major. So it might amaze you that my novel (now titled The Queen of Hearts) was in near-flawless form when I finished its first draft. Revision? Ha! I had to look up the meaning of the word. I’m…
I love this topic, because I know so much more about not writing than I do writing. Not writing is easy, and most of us do it all day long, for so many hours that we get very good at it, and I myself am positively expert. I’ve run into a couple of folks who will say, with a straight face, that writing is such an imperative for them that…
