Happy Saturday, writer friends! If you have the day off today, you might be tempted to spend a LOT of time on writing work. I know I do, any time I’m faced with a stretch of potentially uninterrupted hours, I can start to feel a…
Category: craft
Congratulations, writer! With 15 minutes of prep a day, we have done an hour and forty-five minutes of brainstorming and preparation already for your novel. Today is Friday, and it’s time to rest and recharge. This is a concept I learned from Julia Cameron’s book,…
Are you ready for your next exercise? Let’s brainstorm your character’s emotional arc. You have a character, you have some idea of how they got to be who they are, and yesterday you thought about a problem or flaw. Today we’re going to think about…
Happy Wednesday! How did the freewriting exercise go yesterday? It probably helped you knock a few things loose. If it didn’t, that’s okay. There’s no such thing as wasted writing — all writing is productive, whether it’s practice or self-reflection or, who knows, maybe that…
Today we’re going to think a little more about the character seeds you generated yesterday, so that tomorrow we can put them in trouble. 🙂 For this exercise, we’re going to pick a character from yesterday that resonates with you. I like my heart-broken pianist,…
Happy Monday! So, for the next exercise, I like to start with a character, because that’s the way I grow stories. Maybe that’s your method, too, in which case, let’s do it together! Maybe it’s not, but why not spend 15 minutes today to see…
“But wait, Jane,” you might say, “You told us to plan yesterday. Isn’t scheduling the same thing?” And to this I say, not exactly! They go together, for sure, and you’ll have to look at the spreadsheet you made yesterday so you can now start…
Yesterday we were all about capturing that ineffable spark. Today, we get down to the nitty gritty: planning. Break out your spreadsheets. I happen to love spreadsheets. I find them deeply motivating and inspiring. Maybe you do too — in which case, you probably already…
Nanowrimo is infinitely adaptable — most people use it to write a brand-new draft of a novel. But there’s nothing that says you can’t use it for revisions, or a second draft, or a third, or a… fifteenth. That’s the beauty of it, because the…
Are you getting ready for Nanowrimo? Get ready with me! Let’s do 30 days of prep, with 15-minute exercises every day, designed to help set us up for success. Join me!