Fifty Shades and Profiting Off Fanfic

The Associated Press had a story a few days ago about how Fifty Shades of Grey has its own fanfiction now, and it was a pretty interesting story. It brought to mind a rant on a fan fic rant community I saw recently where somebody was pointing out that a Twilight fic labeled as a [...]

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Where Do You Write?

I find I do my best writing in coffee shops. Caffeine, enough going on that it’s not silent and a limitation on distractions. Writing on my iPad helps with the last of those — switching apps cuts down on the temptation for doing something else, especially compared to when there are multiple windows open on [...]

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Curious about part of Exeter?

I promise, I haven’t died. I’ve been juggling a few extra balls the past several weeks and one of the side effects has been a lack of blogging. I’ve got one particular aspect that should play itself out in the next week or 10 days, and then I’ll be back to regular blogging, though probably [...]

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Experimenting With Writing Techniques

Hi, my name is Jennie. And I write fanfiction. I’m not supposed to say that. “Real” writers don’t write fanfiction — and if they do, they don’t admit it. Literary writers certainly don’t. I can see the head of the local writers group cringing as he reads this. But I’m saying it anyway.   Why? [...]

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Weighing the Value of Promotion vs. Writing

Dan Blank’s post last week about defining success has combined with some other things in my life right now to get me asking myself that very question. One of the things that’s been a challenge the past several weeks has been finding a way to balance writing with platform building and social media. Roz Morris [...]

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Book Review: Conflict and Suspense by James Scott Bell

James Scott Bell is well-known among writers for his useful, practical wisdom on improving our writing and story structure. Conflict and Suspense is the fourth writing book of his I’ve purchased, the third one I’ve read, and like its predecessors, it’s going to be a mainstay in my writing library. I have two bookshelves of [...]

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God’s Design, Fate or Karma? Keeping the Faith While Writing

One of the things I draw from both Eastern spiritual practices and my Catholic faith is the sense of being a small piece in a bigger puzzle, the sense of the infinite surrounding us. This morning, I got rather an unusual lesson in that as I was doing some research for a scene in my [...]

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Drawing the Line Between Skill and Trickery in Writing

Some of you know I’m a big NCIS fan — as if the weekly NCIS Day McMayhem warning on Twitter wasn’t enough of a clue. I’m a fan in part because for all the attention cable dramas get, NCIS does some damn good storytelling, and has been doing it fairly consistently for almost nine years [...]

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Good Writing Lets the Characters Share in Your Misery

 ”Best motivations for creating are the worst aspects of life: revenge, jealousy, loneliness, anger, pressure. Misery makes good inspiration.” — @JesseStern  I’ve said before that the stories I’m telling now, I couldn’t have told 10 years ago when I first wrote a novel. I hadn’t been miserable enough. Fortunately, I’ve since been miserable in many [...]

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The Undercover Soundtrack: My Musical Marinades

Author Roz Morris invited me to participate in The Undercover Soundtrack, a series of posts by writers who use music in our writing process. It just went live, so head on over there to get more insight into that wacky playlist I posted yesterday.

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Sneak Peek: Writing Playlist for All That Is Necessary

On Wednesday, author Roz Morris is hosting a guest post from me in her Undercover Soundtrack series of writers talking about how we use music in our writing. She’ll post a playlist of the pieces I mention in that post, but it’s not the same as the playlist for All That Is Necessary, so I [...]

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Blog interview with Terri Giuliano Long

Thanks to the wonderful writer Terri Giuliano for interviewing me on her blog today about Thrown Out and writing in general. There’s a few hints at what might be coming in the next book, so head on over there and check it out if you’re curious…

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Looking for beta readers

As many of you know, I’m working on the first Exeter novel, and I’m in the middle of revisions. My first three chapters are headed to my critique group later this week, and I’m hoping to find a couple of people who aren’t swamped with holiday plans to take a look at them first to [...]

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Embracing Change in Life and Writing

This weekend, I had to trash a few pages I had written in the first draft of my novel. They were good, but the character was no longer a POV character because of some structural changes. It was a little frustrating to see the overall word count drop, especially since I liked the chapter, but [...]

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Some thoughts on rewriting before NaNo kicks off

With NaNoWriMo on the horizon – less than 36 hours to go – I’m seeing lots of people talking about writing their NaNo novel. I’m not participating this year because I’m in revision mode on Book 2, but since I took a NaNo approach to drafting it, I figured I’d share a little bit about [...]

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