Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

Genre Trouble: Everybody is subcultural (Literary fiction is a genre too)

Until I started working with the National Novel Writing Month local community in the Twin Cities, my experience with peer-organized writing groups (as opposed to professionally led classes) had been nearly uniformly negative. Now, I feel as if I’ve come … Continue reading

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Six Sentence Sunday, 4 March 2012 (The Reincarnations of Miss Anne)

In Utopia, no-place or Eutopia, the good place, dreams are solid as marble and blue as the sea.  Favilla Vogel, whose name means a bird, had been dreaming of flight.  She had her arms wrapped around someone whose face she … Continue reading

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Six Sentence Sunday, 26 February 2012 (The Reincarnations of Miss Anne)

The harbor at Utopia is shaped like a crescent.  Twin arms of white-and-gold headland wrap tenderly around the bay like the horns of the moon, like a mother holding a beloved child.  Favilla Vogel looks out over the water, as … Continue reading

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NaNoFeed: NaNo 2011 is finished, and now a backward look

Last night around 9:30pm I finished writing the endgame of my 2011 National Novel Writing Month project, The Necromancer and the Barbarian: A Love Story. I promptly sent the revised full manuscript and the replacement final chapters to my beta readers. … Continue reading

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NaNoFeed: Enter the villain (at long last!)

I know a story exists when it begins to tell itself, or when a character turns to look at me. And I’m learning, very slowly, how I need to rest between bouts. What I mean by “when a character turns … Continue reading

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The ragged tag-end first draft blues

They warned us, of course. Finish the novel in November. Use that last crazy burst of energy to get it all down, and fix it up later. I’m still finishing it. There is one chapter that needs rewriting into an … Continue reading

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The mysteries of beta reading, or mapping what isn’t there

I am currently beta-reading a number of first-draft novel manuscripts. Over the last three years of National Novel Writing Month, I have been privileged to acquire a small group of first-draft beta-reading friends. Those relationships have grown slowly, out of … Continue reading

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NaNo 2011 novel revision plan, revised version

From long experience, I know that I get things done, however ambitious my lists of things to do. However, hardly ever do I get them done on the original timeline. As I’m looking at the missing pieces of this year’s … Continue reading

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The curious dance of order and chaos

After yesterday’s break, I realized that it was indeed “rest” rather than “being lazy” that made me take a break from looking at the NaNo novel. Today I woke up with very clear ideas about the missing parts: how the fantastic … Continue reading

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Coming back to the beginning, or lessons from the cook pot

Sometimes you don’t know what you were setting out to do until you’ve done it. Last year, I wrote my first completed story arc for National Novel Writing Month. For the first time, I sent a work out to beta … Continue reading

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