I must admit that I love a balanced approached to time management. But I didn’t always. In the past (and no so distant past–we are talking like 3.5 years ago), whenever I had a publishing deadline I used to stay up all night long or more. Yes, on more than one occasion I stayed up […]
Writing Advice
Do you print out all your chapters as your write your WIP?
I used to always print out my chapters as I wrote. My printer saw a lot of me. But for my current WIP I did something very differently. I rarely printed out chapters after I wrote them. Instead, I did almost all of my editing on the computer. Look, there were exceptions. For example, I […]
Revising from the Heart
I’m here to tell you about a revelation I recently came to-—revise from the heart. The epiphany happened last Monday afternoon when I was feeling disheartened by the state of my current WIP. I had polished the first 40 pages (over and over again in a constant but safe retread). Why? Well, going forward pushes […]
Twelve Writing Tips
Recently, a teen reader asked me to give her some writing tips, and after ruminating about what to send, I just started typing up some guidelines that hit me in no particular order. I didn’t get into the nitty gritty of line editing, such as–here are common placeholders or watch out for these flabby verbs. […]
Here’s a quick video tip for simplifying your WIP
Here’s how you can simplify your novel. Okay, not everything you need to know. Just one tip to start you off. And that tip is…drum roll please: collapse your characters. Watch the 30 second video (okay, I was cheating it’s 35 seconds actually) to find out how: Enjoy! Yours, Hillary p.s. forgive my presidential hairdo. […]
Why I Need Silence to Write
Noise chases me. And when someone chases me, I run. Why? Well, I prefer silence in order to write. I know that this is not how everyone operates. Friends and colleagues post their playlists as they write. Wow. How do they do this? When I hear music my mind is pulled away from my own […]