A Work in Progress

 I'm doing okay during this round of NaNoWriMo. I'm not at the recommended projected speed, but I do have eleven thousand very disorganized set of words already written. Only need 39,000 more by the end of June. No problem. Actually, there is a problem. My words will be horrendous. How can it not? And the story will still probably need another good thirty thousand words just to make it a complete book after NaNo. But, that's what revisions are for. And that's just what I'll do. I'd like to have this middle-grade book written and edited by the end of the year, this includes the thirty thousand extra words, the thirty thousand I have to edit out and rewrite, and of course, the thirty thousand that was supposed to write itself because I'm so brilliant. (Oh and did I mention this is the THIRD rewrite of this book? Yeah ... issues). Anyway, NaNo is great because what it is, is a giant swift-kick in the behind. And right now, at the onset of summer a

Camp NaNoWriMo I've written several times about why we need to expand our writing, as in, writing in styles and genres that we normally don't write in. I can hear you saying, "That's all fine and dandy for someone else, but for me and my thriller manuscripts I don't need that kind of practice." Now, I want you to hear me saying. "You're wrong!" Why? Because, we have to always be learning in order to keeping knowing. That sounds kind of lame when I write it that way. But here's the gist: to be really, really good at something, requires continual, daily, practice. This means writing in your genre, and writing in OTHER genres to be not only a good writer, but a great writer: someone who can understand all sorts of things because of this very act of writing in a genre one normally doesn't write in. So, what do you need to do? Try doing what I'm doing. Well, so I'm probably not doing all of these, but here are three exampl