A Writer's Journey

A NaNoWriMo Rebel

If anything the National Novel Writing Month offers to any writers is the profound lessons one learns of oneself. Consider boot camp in the army, serving to tear a person down to see what stuff they are made up. The NaNoWriMo does much the same. I certainly learned about myself in 2007 when I won the [...]

Blogging through NaNoWriMo

Some bloggers take a hiatus in the month of NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org) in order to focus all their writing to their current project. Trying to reach the 50,000 word mark by November 31st is tough with the tug of responsible to one’s blog. So here are a few tips: Keep the blog entries short and sweet. As [...]

The unofficial NaNoWriMo

A number of members in our writing group mentioned today that they are embroiled in the drama of their own stories to consider taking on a new project for the National Novel Writing Month. They agreed the grueling 1700 word count a day- or the 50,000 words within 30 days- was worthwhile goal, but couldn’t [...]

Preparations for NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo. This auspicious contest began in 1999 by Chris Baty with the challenge of 50,000 in thirty days. Two years ago, I dared to partake in the challenge and this year decided to once more take up the pen (or rather the keyboard) and crank out [...]

Handy writing tips I found on the web

It never ceases to astound and amaze me what I can find the Internet, so I figured I’d share what I picked up along the way: How to Start Writing When You Don’t Feel Like It- This blogger shares some great tips on writing when you’re not in the mood. The site itself has tons of [...]

Writing from our own drama

I was telling a fellow writer the other day some drama I experienced in my teen years when my family endured a harrowing experience of being stalked. Like some B-movie, the guy would call and threaten to kill us, to blow up our house, or vehicles would be vandalized under the cloak of night. I [...]

Blogging- Update regularly

I’m finding more often than not that writing regularly is the single most important marketing tool for any blog. Updating regularly enables your blog to post to readers, links to the search engines, and enables readers more keywords to find you. (Don’t forget to tag your blog entries). This coming weekend the writer’s group meets with [...]

Finding the time to write

Our last meeting in our writer’s group brought some interesting questions and answers from the myriad of would-be authors. Some are stay at home mothers, who need to squeeze in the time to sketch plots and weave words amid the chaos of child rearing. Naptimes and bedtimes became necessary to get any time to write. Others [...]

Why I don’t like Helium.com

I joined Helium based on the many lists online suggesting that writers try their skill at publishing (and earning money) through the site. I soon discovered how much I really hated the site. My biggest complaint is they own the copyrights once you publish. You can’t move, remove, delete, or do anything with your own articles [...]

The wonders of portable apps

You can run then from these handy portable drives, and I found a number of them particularly helpful for the would-be author.