Revising “From the Ashes of Courage”
Revising a novel can be an exciting and trying process. Exciting, because you get to see a story you’ve been working on for weeks (or longer) finally taking final form. Revision is also when you finalize the themes in your story, because the characters’ story arcs have reached their final form, and you get to […]
Word Counts and Words That Count
Between 11:59 PM tonight and 12:00 AM tomorrow morning, I write 1,182 words, simply by switching from the NaNoWriMo word-count tool to the one built into my word processor. I have 7 more scenes to write to complete From the Ashes of Courage, and most of those are epilogue. Today, I penned over 4,000 words, […]
Parents of Divorced Couples
I ran into an interesting issue today with one of the characters of From the Ashes of Courage. In brief, Gail and George divorced years ago, and they haven’t seen each other since. Now, she’s part of his life again, as a friend. George’s father seems genuinely happy to see her and treats her with […]
She’s a headstrong businesswoman…
She’s a headstrong, driven, single-minded businesswoman, a successful independent professional at only 29 years old. But she still feels empty. He’s a fun-loving real-estate agent who made a mint in the boom market, now fast running out of money. And their friends set them up on a blind date, unaware that many years ago, they […]
Anybody Go to BU? (and NaNoWriMo Update)
According to my writing spreadsheet, I’m on track to finish NaNoWriMo, but I’ll need to come up with more scenes in the novel. I’m averaging 616 words per scene, which is around half what I had originally estimated. Not a problem, because I have a number of additional, unplanned scenes already on the back burner, […]
Finding the Answer to the Meaning of Life
I’ve been absent here, because I’m working on a new novel. After collecting mounds of marketing data, I’ve discovered that I absolutely must write Confessions of a Veteran Software Developer— That’s not a novel, but a true story of my years as a professional software developer. However, I have to find a new title. (Apparently, […]