I finished the draft of this new novel on Thanksgiving Day. Since then, I’ve been filling in some gaps, trying to get to at least the NaNoWriMo pace each day. Through Sunday, November 29, I wrote 93,200 words. The NaNoWriMo pace for that period is 48,343 words, and my personal […]
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NaNoWriMo 2020: Well, I Did It. Now What?
From the start of the month through Sunday, November 15, I wrote over 57,000 words on my next novel. Whew! So, I satisfied the NaNoWriMo target of 50,000 words in a month. I actually hit 50,000 on Friday the 13th, so I guess it was a lucky day for me. […]
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NaNoWriMo 2020, Week 2 Is Underway
On Sunday, November 8, I hit 30,000 words! The NaNoWriMo pace for that period is 13,336 words, and my personal pace of 2,000 words/day is 16,000. So I have blown past my goals. I have never written 30,000 words in a month, let alone in eight days. And I’ve been […]
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NaNoWriMo 2020, Off To a Great Start
I’ve mentioned NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) before—the national endeavor by authors around the world to write 50,000 words on their novels during the month of November. I’ve always had excuses for why I shouldn’t participate. The timing never seemed right. I’ve never written more than 20,000 words in a […]
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Beta Reader Feedback Is In
I’ve now received all my beta readers’ feedback on the contemporary novel that is my work-in-progress. I have spent the past week or so reviewing their input and starting to make the changes I think appropriate. Most of their feedback is really helpful. A couple of my beta readers had […]
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My Work-In-Progress, and the Temptation to Edit As I Read
As I reported to readers of my newsletter last week, I completed the rough draft of my work-in-progress in mid-April. This first draft took just under six months to write—not fast, but also not the slowest first draft I’ve written. Because it’s a contemporary novel, I didn’t have to do […]
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Another Update on My Work-in-Progress
The silver lining in the pandemic crisis is that I have been writing diligently on my work-in-progress, a contemporary novel I intend to publish under a pseudonym. In Kansas City, the shut-down began in earnest about the weekend of March 14-15. At that point, I had around 70,000 words written […]
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The Forest and the Trees and Writing Affirmations
I am in the thick of writing my current work-in-progress, approaching the halfway mark. I am in the trees, and I cannot see the forest. I write each scene and feel good about it, but I have no feel for the whole. Each conversation between my characters seems real, but […]
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Back to Beginnings: My Next Writing Project
Perhaps it seems odd that I just announced the publication of my last novel, My Hope Secured, a week ago, and now I’m writing about beginning another novel. But the only way I know to improve as a writer is to keep writing. It’s a very different feeling facing a […]
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Where Did 1850s Oregon Farmers Get Their Water?
As I am finishing my current novel, it dawned on me that I have not focused on how the settlers in Oregon obtained their water. I’ve just assumed they had plenty, mostly from creeks or springs near their cabins. This is probably a reasonable assumption, but I decided I should […]
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