Young Adult Indie Author
I was doing some rearranging the other day – not cleaning, not decluttering – just rearranging of the stuff, and I found an old binder that had writing pieces I did when I was a kid. Now these are not the first things I ever wrote, I’m sure, but they are the oldest things I…
Okay, now we are getting into the writing – finally! This spread will get your creative juices flowing, give you some amazing ideas for how to start your very first scene (or in our case, the first page) and what conflict your characters are facing. Each scene or chapter needs its own conflict – which…
So originally I wanted week 3 to be actually writing the beginning of our story, but after the simple outline was finished I knew I needed to spend a tiny bit more time with the characters. Again, instead of a formal tarot spread, I just pulled 1-2 cards for each person. If you’d like to…
Welcome to Week 2 of this fun tarot experiment where we will be working on a very simple outline using a 3-card spread for the Beginning, Middle, and End of our story. I shuffled and pulled three cards, laying them down side by side. I usually start by looking at each one individually and then…
Yesterday, while I was doing the dishes, I was thinking about my social media and what I wanted to write about. I had some ideas written down but none of them were feeling very fun or exciting. In between soaping up some bowls and drying some plates, I had a really crazy idea – and…
As you know, my current work in progress has gone on quite a journey from short story to a novel about Leo dealing with his famous father to a novel about his sister, Etta, and NOW about two young High School juniors, Etta and Gina, dealing with their own ups and downs of family, school,…
I go through cycles of my author journey where writing feels really carefree, fun, amazing, and then there are downright muddy, painful, and just plain hard times too. I’m in a hard phase right now, as you know from last month but I’ve decided instead of just staying in the muck, I’m going to pull…
The other day I dropped one of those Question boxes onto my Instagram story so that I could do a big Q&A style blog post, but I only got one real honest-to-goodness question, the rest were spammers and bots. I was a bit disappointed until I realized that the human question that was asked was…
“How’s the novel coming?” This question, to be honest, leaves me feeling cold lately. The writing is just not flowing. Editing feels like I’m trying to create a beautiful statue from a giant slab of marble, slow and meticulous. Kinda tiring really. 😞 We discussed a few weeks ago the concept of new…
I write contemporary coming of age young adult novels. It’s a mouthful and it might not even be the correct terminology – I have no idea – but it’s what I write. I write books set in the now, in a real city in the real world with fictional characters going through things that…