I keep telling myself that as I frantically prepare for NaNoWriMo , which is suddenly only a week away. I am nowhere close to having a tale to tell, so any bit of help is a blessing. I'm not talking about maid service or a private chef, though both would be nice. I just need something to help me focus and simplify what seems like a huge challenge this year.   Available on Amazon To that end, I was enormously pleased to dig into a gorgeous and tightly written eBook called The 30-Day Novel by Merrie Destefano .  It's a short book, hitting all the usual highlights of planning a novel, but in a brisk and concise way. Under 100 pages, some of which are clever MidJourney AI steampunk images and pages for notes, the book covers these topics: Chapter One: Make A Commitment  Chapter Two: Make A Plan  Chapter Three: Plotting Versus Discovery  Chapter Four: Story Building  Chapter Five: Character Building.  Chapter Six: World Building  Chapter Seven: Ma...

When I decided to follow my second frontier fiction (historical) novel with a cozy mystery, I had a sleuth, a sidekick, and a town in mind. And humor. My sleuth is funny. I started the novel during NaNoWriMo 2020, using the main character I’d tested in a short story. My critique group liked him, so, I thought, how hard could this be? My 50,000 words flowed as I jumped into a story, using my best pantser techniques. I went off track so many times, I can’t keep count. Here’s why I find the process hard: 1. Three people die in my novel, but only one of them is a resident of the town. Most cozies I’ve read keep the characters local. It’s too easy to have the villain be an outsider who shows up to knock off the victims. 2. When a character is killed by violence, it’s hard to avoid any graphic description of the body, especially when that body is lying out on the ground where everyone can see. “Oh, he’s dead,” seems like such an understatement. 3. Every single time I try to write a mystery...

I’ve been sucked into the NaNoWriMo whirlpool again. My husband says, “Oh, no! That means no big meals and no housecleaning for a whole month.” “Except Thanksgiving,” I respond. I plan way ahead for that meal because it’s my favorite of the whole year. I still make homemade bread stuffing, and I buy half turkey breasts to roast. Often we repeat the whole meal for Christmas, especially if we don't have company coming. And this year, there won’t be any company. But back to the dear man’s comment about big meals and housecleaning. Unless you do a little housecleaning , I think to myself. I don’t say it aloud. After all, he mows the lawn and shovels the snow and several other things it would pain me to do. Literally. I’m grateful. About NaNoWriMo. I’ve jumped in the pool several times over the years, but I think I only made the full 50,000 word total with a real novel one time. I’d have to check, but I might have done 50,000 words of combo short stories and rewriting in another year. B...

All through February, we’ve shared some of our favorite Writing and Critique Partnerships Ever. I’m ending the month by talking about a few of my favorite online groups, which I enjoy much more than live meetups. About fifteen years ago, I belonged to an online group called Book-in-a-Week. Every month, we posted goals, and were required to submit our word counts daily. A small team of moderators tracked and tallied all our reports. I didn’t actually work on a novel in these sessions, but cranked out a lot of non-fiction writing like newspaper articles and blog posts. Somehow, the group accountability was important to my productivity and success. I also met some really good writers there, including several of our Blood-Red Pencil team bloggers. Ann Parker was working on one of her early titles in the Silver Rush Mystery series, perhaps even the first. Before long, I became a beta-reader and occasional editor and writing partner. It was a small group of 100-200 participants in an...

Your character's purse is stolen in the airport where she's changing planes, and all she's left with are a few bills and some change in her jeans' pocket. Her new job, the one she's worked toward for the last year, is 500 miles away. Her start date in two days looms in front of her, and she doesn't know anybody in the area she can call for help. Grabbing her carry-on bag, she hurries out to the curb, where a Greyhound is unloading flight passengers. She begs the driver to drop her off at a point where she can catch a bus to her destination. After telling her he can't do that, he relents and takes her to the terminal. Dusk darkens into night as she settles into the only empty seat on a bus heading toward her new job and new life. It's going to be a long ride. Posted by Linda Lane   LSLaneBooks.com | DenverEditor.com

Three little girls stare out the window of the tiny cabin. Mommy left a long time ago to take their sick baby brother down the mountain to the doctor, and now it's snowing so hard they can't even see the road. The fire in the wood-burning stove is reduced to embers. The youngest begins to cry; they haven't eaten since Mommy left. Where is she? Posted by Linda Lane   LSLaneBooks.com | DenverEditor.com

November and gratitude go together, given the traditional Thanksgiving celebration in the U.S. However, let’s look beyond the turkey dinner, visits with relatives, and reflections on the year’s blessings and consider this month’s writing prompt— NaNoWriMo . Now pounding away daily on the keyboard to meet the 50,000-word requirement by month’s end may intimidate some, so let’s explore the inspiration of gratitude when facing a writing deadline. I recently read that gratitude helps generate happiness. What does happiness have to do writing? Mood can affect both ability and desire to write. Maybe it doesn’t in your case; in mine, it does. What affects my mood? Weather? Sometimes. The moods of people around me? To a degree. Life in general? Uh huh. Negative thinking? Always. And the list goes on. Still, I fancy myself a writer and want to finish those stories I’ve already started. It’s been said that a routine of daily writing makes huge sense. (Remember NaNoWriMo.) Unfor...

I teach various kinds of writing classes – how to write memoir, how to use historical detail in your writing, how to journal without self-judgment, and how to ghostwrite. I always start off any class with a five-step writing process, which works with any subject and any kind of project, from blog posts to books, memoir to self-help. I call it the Five Easy Pieces Process, partially because I love that movie. If Jack Nicholson were a writer, maybe he would follow these rules. Here are the bare essentials: Step One: Write everything you know, or think you know; everything you feel, or think you feel; everything you've done, or wish you'd done (or wish you hadn't done), everything you imagine, everything that pops into your head —in short, write everything. Basically this means: do not censor as you write. Editing comes later. Step Two: Read what you wrote, and look for the recurring themes or threads. I promise they are there. Look until you find them. Step Thre...

The most frightening thing about October is how fast time flies. It's almost November again, and time for another National Novel Writing Month . Here's an even scarier thought: I've participated for ten years and haven't finished one book I've started over there. How about you? But it really doesn't matter, because that ten years represents a portion of the 10,000 hours of writing practice I've put in for the past decade. More than that really, when you consider all my various jobs in the publishing industry, off and on over the decades. There are many people and tools I'm thankful for. I still remember the generosity of authors I met in person and over the phone so many years ago. Like the woman who told me to get a copy of The Writers Market . That changed my writing life for all time.  Then there's the hour I spent on the phone with Kathleen Burdick-Hague, while her husband, Michael Hague , signed at a Tattered Cover book eve...

We are three days into a month full of late nights, hair pulling, and curses lifted into the sky -- all in the hopes of writing a 50k novel. Ahh, NaNoWriMo, how we love and loathe you so. If ever there was a time when we needed to lather ourselves in love, it's during the month of November. Today, I want to offer you a way to give yourself love each day during NaNoWriMo: the Love-A-Day Notes. I started this little exercise about a week ago to give myself some a.m. love before I started the day. On Sunday, I sat and wrote my seven notes, folded each note, mixed them up, then placed one in each day of the week so that every morning, I would be surprised by which note I received. Make sure to do that throughout NaNoWriMo, too! You only need three items to make your Love-A-Day Notes: 7-Day Pillbox (which you can buy for cheap) 1 pack of Post-its Your favorite pen (or set of pens if you want to be creative and colorful) To help in organizing what you'll write, t...

First in a week-long series exploring novels to film. A few years ago, when I started writing longer stories and began developing the Morristown mystery series, I noticed my tendency to naturally break chapters into tight scenes that seemed more like scripting theater scenes than book chapters. I also found myself looking for photos of people who might play the roles of my characters, and as I built character files, I added images to give me strong visual descriptions for my writing. That seemed like casting actors for a play or movie. When my male protagonist took over my writing voice, I had quite a few challenges identifying with his character, and visuals became even more important to my writing. I spent hours looking for my main character, J. Lindsey Calhoun, and thought I’d found him in this man: But two aspects always bothered me about this image. He needed to have blue eyes – that changed from light blue to stormy dark depending on emotion - and I didn’t get th...

This post was first published here on November 27, 2013. Prior to the invention of the Internet, writers holed up in their attics, alone and palely scribbling, fantasizing about an elusive publishing contract. They spent sunny afternoons deep in the bowels of libraries flipping through the card catalog and paging through thick reference books. Scribes developed callouses on their fingers. They sported perpetual ink stains from writing draft after draft on paper they wadded and tossed in bins. They longed for someone, anyone, to talk to about their passion. They were isolated introverts with impossible dreams, often in desperate need of a critique group or at least someone to help with plot snags or elusive titles. Then some smarty pants invented the electric typewriter, which led to the personal computer, which led to the Internet. Writers were able to research from the comfort of their living rooms while still in their bathrobes. They could draft and revise a hundred ti...

"Work, the what's-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what d'you-call-it."—P.G. Wodehouse, Psmith, Journalist A placeholder is what a writer puts in when she can’t think of the right line or idea at the moment. Placeholders can be a useful tool when you are making that mad dash through your first draft, especially during November’s NaNoWriMo challenge. How often do you get bogged down when you stop to try to think of just the right word or phrase? How many times do you make a detour to the Internet to search for that word or phrase and get further derailed by blogs, articles or that “ding” that signals you have a Facebook message? Well, turn off everything but your word processing program and remember “placeholders.” You can use a placeholder when you can’t remember what you named the heroine’s fifth child ten  chapters ago. “When he saw the huge shadow looming, Little Whosit dropped his books on the ground and ran.” You don’t need to take...

I've done it for five years. I'm doing it again this year. For one solid month, for 30 running days, I will focus my attention and intent on writing a long piece of fiction. A story. A novel. Not blogging. Not editing. Not all the other running-words-together writing I do. I will focus on writing a book and I will do it by joining 200,000 or more other writers participating in NaNoWriMo a.k.a. National Novel Writing Month . And I will do it first thing every morning, crapping out 1,667 - 2,500 words before I do another thing. I will not care if it's crap. I will write. I will write fiction. I will create a world. I will create characters. They will do stuff. To each other. To me. And maybe, some sweet day, to you. I am already starting to get nervous. My palms are sweaty. My heart is beating faster. Freakout! How about you? Are you revved up for NaNoWriMo? Does a group effort like this excite you? Propel? Inspire? Leave us your NaNo handle i...

After almost five glorious years of daily posting, we are closing the Blood-Red Pencil blog.     Now that I've gotten that out of my system, let's get down to business! I don't know what you have planned for April, but it's a busy month for me. I've wrapped up some winter projects and am ready to set my sights on new things (isn't that what spring is all about?), so I'm participating in the A-Z Blogging Challenge to goose my News From Nowhere blog . It's the platform I intend to use to promote a mystery novel trilogy I'm imagineering, with publication planned for two years in the future. To that end, I'll also be participating in Camp NaNoWriMo in an attempt to crank out 50,000 words over the next 30 days. I know many people don't think this is a good way to write anything of worth, but it gives me something tangible to work with, which in my book is worth a lot more than nothing. Otherwise I'd moodle forever and never get one...

We are currently in the second week of NaNoWriMo , and in a few days, we will be moving through the halfway mark and into the third week. Surely, many of us started with a bang, fingers striking keys the second after midnight on November 1. We've been eager, working out strategies, waking up early to get the writing in, developing some scheme to make sure we get in our 1667+ words a day. This is about the time, however, where some of us that started strong begin to peter out. We begin to question our story, actually think about the writing instead of writing. We begin to wonder if our story is good. At this stage, this point where we're about to hit the peak of the writing mountain and need that push to the peak, we need to remember this: What opportunities? Well, surely not to ditch the writing altogether and call your NaNo 2012 experience a bust. Below, I present you with a few opportunities that can keep you writing . . . and ultimately winning NaNoWriMo. Jum...