Sometimes life (and death) gets in the way. Don’t lose your great idea just because you didn’t capture it somehow. Even pantsers love my Planning Blueprint because it makes it super simple to plan out as much or as little as you like while leaving room to grow your story organically. Or use it AFTER you’ve written to work out any revision issues.  Need help?  Make planning (and writing) your novel easy. Grab The Novel Approach Planning Worksheet for just $9 (AU).  Or join my free Facebook group The Novel Approach for Aspiring Authors . I’m also running a Novel Planning Intensive every Wednesday in May. You’ll work on your plan before and/or during the session. Every participant will get a chance to ask for advice on any part of their story where they are feeling stuck, or ask questions in general. Observer tickets are also available. Observers will get to see an overview of the Blueprint and how it works, but will leave the call before participants begin sharing. ...

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...

This post first ran on Sunday, October 19, 2008 Any method of writing is valid if it produces something worth reading. I am a writer who outlines meticulously. But I do know that all of the different methods can work really well for the type of writer that they suit. Call it what you will - pantsing versus plotting, freewriting versus crafted writing, plus the third option (a bit of both: start with the beginning and end in mind, freewrite until you get stuck then plot your way out of it) - all these methods work somewhere for someone. Once you've figured out how you need to write to suit your personality, you've got it made. And when you do reach that point, do not let the so-called pros convince you that you're doing it wrong. Stephen King has said some nasty things in the past about writers who outline before they write. He's softened his tone, though, in the last twenty years. But I'm going to poke back, anyway, with the comment that many of Stephen King...

Atrophy : decrease in size or wasting away of a body part or tissue ~ Merriam-Webster.com When we hear or read the word atrophy , we tend to think about muscles . . . parts of the body as the definition above suggests. But what about writing ? Can't it suffer from atrophy, too? Surely, for some writers, there are moments (sometimes long stretches of moments) in which no writing gets done. We might call it writer's block. We might call it focusing on work and family and whatever else is on the list that goes before writing, but the fact remains, the word count is at a standstill. There are some of us that can easily jump back into writer mode as if we never left, but there are others who find coming back to the page a daunting task. It's as if they lost the know-how of writing. Lost the joy and wonder of it as well. I call this Literary Atrophy : the decrease in size or wasting away of writing in one's life. The MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia sugg...