More Writing Lessons from Normal Life

I was recently helping my daughter with one of her college application questions—okay, it wasn’t that recent; it was a few months ago. But when I was done helping her edit said question, I jotted down a note to blog about what I had learned from the experience. I haven’t needed that note until now…

Residencies with Friends

It’s been a minute (more than a month) since I went to Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities for a week-long writing residency. If you’ve been around, you might recognize that place or even that sentence, because it was my fourth residency there (and my fifth residency (and one fellowship) total). What could I…

May I Introduce You to Fast-Drafting?

The idea behind “fast-drafting” is to prepare yourself ahead of time so that when you get to the point when you are ready to write your first draft, you can just buckle down and fly through it. You don’t work backwards, revise, edit, or get distracted. You don’t even worry all that much about quality.…

I Won Nano

I thought I had won Nanowrimo before. Officially, according to their website, I haven’t even won Camp Nanowrimo (during which you set your own word goal in the summer), but I had come ridiculously close (less than 2000 words) to winning Nano the year I started The Journey of Clement Fancywater (in 2014). Well then,…

Celebrating My Writing Group Friends

Every writer should have a writing group. I say this, but surely there can’t be a writing group with like-talented writers for every writer in every community. So I guess what I mean is, I am thankful for my writing group. A small group (capped at six since its founding) that is joined by invite…

Return to Nanowrimo

It takes an effort to accomplish Nanowrimo and to do other things besides Nanowrimo that you just can’t function without… (For me, this includes cleaning, laundry, making meals, dishes, helping kids with homework, keeping up on the college application process, random appointments like for doctors and grooming, one week singing at church, and always Thanksgiving,…

Outlining Fiction with Phillip M. Locey

I am gearing up for Nanowrimo 2022! If you don’t know what Nanowrimo is, you can read my old blog post HERE. Or I can give you the gist: Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month and it’s been around for, what?, twenty years? The basic and original premise is an online space/club for people…

A Hundred Rejections a Year

I heard some advice at the writing conference I went to last spring, and I keep hearing it. Or at least I keep repeating it and other authors nod their heads like they are familiar with it. If you haven’t already guessed from the title of this blog entry, the advice is for writers to…

It Takes 500 Posts

After I posted the last blog entry (“Published!), WordPress notified me that it was the 500th blog post on The Starving Artist. Whew! So I did a little digging and found out this, as well: my first post was on October 17, 2012, “A Meandering History of The Starving Artist.” My first book review was…