Even after getting our educations — whether that’s at the collegiate level or simply through life experience and trial-and-error — we writers still have to do our homework. We have to research for our business.
Eventually, during a break between lectures, there was a little circle of conversation at the hotel coffee shop. I don’t recall how it happened, but something I said about my in-progress novel led to this editor’s turning to me and asking, “So, Courtney, what is your book about?”
In this video, I talk about:
My thinking time happens whenever I just let my mind wander. Like a kid, it comes back to me with its hands and pockets stuffed full of all sorts of oddities…
Now, I must needs pick up a different thread and follow that into the creative tangle. That thread, my darlings, is the religious one.
Over time, I developed a view of God that ate away at my soul like a ravaging disease. Somehow, I came to believe that the only way I could make God happy was to sacrifice whatever I held most dear about myself. And, of course, what I prized most about myself was my creativity…
As a large, flippered, marine mammal once said, the time has come to talk of other things. But these aren’t easy things like shoes and sealing wax, dear readers. These are hard things, and they’re things it hurts me to talk about. I need to talk about them…but the telling comes with a painful price. …
As of this past Monday night, I’ve finished Draft 2 of Stains of Grace.
When I write the first draft of a novel, I pound out the manuscript as coherently and quickly as I can. I started pre-writing for Stains of Grace on October 1, 2010; started writing on November 1, 2010; and typed “The End” on February 10, 2011. That’s the fastest I’ve ever finished a first draft in my life…
The first draft of the unfortunately untitled Demons 3 HAS A WORKING TITLE. I repeat: I HAVE A WORKING TITLE.
Which side of my brain do I access during which parts of the writing process? Left side for outlines, character description, plot arcs, planning chapters scene-by-scene? Right side for writing the rough draft and letting the story flow? Writing the first draft requires me to follow my heart and let my characters get into trouble…
Readers Dearests, I am so excited! Today, I started writing the climax to my eighth novel, the unfortunately untitled Demons 3! If you’ve been paying attention (which I know you have, you sweet, observant things, you), you know that Demons 3 is the third in a YA paranormal trilogy. The first is Colors of Deception, …