Join the Forest!
Join the Forest!
Monthly Archives: August 2011
The Last Day of WFMAD 2011
Tweet It’s a celebration!!!!! You made it! Thirty-one days in a row of writing at least fifteen minutes a day! ::dances with abandon, horrifying everyone in the room and embarrassing the dogs:: Wait. Why aren’t you dancing? Why are you looking at me like that? I know that I dance like Dorkasaurus Rex, but I [...]
WFMAD Day Almost The Last
Tweet First things, first. As I post this, Muslims on the other side of the world are waking up and celebrating the end of Ramadan. Eid Sa‘eed! If you are celebrating the Eid, I hope you have a blessed day. I also hope (if you’ve been following this blog for the past month), you’re able [...]
WFMAD Day 29 – Slaying Demons of Doubt
Tweet I’ve heard from a number of you recently about the struggle to maintain your confidence during the writing process. Many (all?) of you are beset by doubts about your talent, your current project, the competition, the marketplace, your future, and pretty much everything related to being a writer. So am I. Frankly, it’s amazing [...]
WFMAD Day 28 – Back in the Saddle
Tweet I received this terrific set of questions a few days ago: “How do you start again after stopping for a few years? In writing three novels, I built skill upon skill and felt pretty good about the third. Now I am petrified to write again. I start, the writing is horrible, I stop. I’m [...]
Posted in LHA
Comments closed
WFMAD Day 27 – Go Bag
Tweet I think the most striking statistic about Hurricane Irene so far is CNN’s statement that the storm will affect 1 in 6 Americans. (I’m still trying to wrap my head around this.) We are far away from the danger; might get some wind and a little rain. We’re used to losing power frequently, so [...]
WFMAD Day 26 – Permission to write suckaously
Tweet Several of you asked me to address the universal discomfort of sucky early drafts. Given the barn floor quality of my early drafts, I consider myself an expert in this area. “Queen of Awful Early Drafts,” that’s what you can inscribe on my crown. Here’s the thing they probably don’t tell you in MFA [...]
WFMAD Day 25 – Dive in
Tweet (PSSSSST! BE SURE TO SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF TODAY”S POST! I HAVE TO ASK YOU SOMETHING!) One of the differences (for me) between an early and a late draft is that as I revise, I trim or cut the opening chapters. I have a bad habit of frontloading too much information in early [...]
WFMAD Day 24 – Overcoming the pain
Tweet No earthquakes up here on the tundra today, so I’ll write yesterday’s original blog idea. The idea came from my right knee. The right knee that started acting up at mile 13 during yesterday’s run, and forced me to stop many, many times to stretch. (Because it’s not really my knee that is the [...]
WFMAD Day 23 – Earthquake edition
Tweet I had a great run today. On that great run, I thought of the PERFECT WFMAD blog post. I shuffled home, ate, showered, and headed out to run a few errands before I sat down to write. Somewhere in the middle of the errands, there was an earthquake. No, I did not feel it, [...]
WFMAD Day 22 – Habit-trails
Tweet We are gerbils. We have our paths that we run daily; kitchen, car, office, school, work. We pause at regular intervals to eat and to (ahem) get rid of what we’ve eaten. Most of us bathe regularly and brush our teeth. We are the products of our habits. Only problem is, when not enough [...]