creative process
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The question is some form of: should you throw down a crappy first draft or should you edit as you write? Every day, I see writers praising the crappy first draft and encouraging new writers to just get it all onto the page. You can fix a mess later, they say. You can’t fix a…
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I’m just starting work on a new novel, so this seems like a great time to talk about turning ideas into stories. Of course, there’s no magic formula, and if anyone ever tells you there is, you should be very suspicious. But there’s no harm in reading what other writers have to say about their…
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It’s the fantasy, isn’t it? That life as a writer means getting up at the crack of dawn, shuffling off to the kitchen in your sloppy but cute topknot and yoga pants for some coffee, and clacking away at the keyboard for an hour or two before anyone else gets up? The coffee mug is always classy…
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Housecleaning is part of my writing process. People always tell me to leave the dishes in the sink and the dust-bunnies on the stairs, as if there’s something pathological about needing to clean first. For a while, I believed them and tried to force myself to just sit down and write when I had ten…
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I’m plotting a massive rewrite. To be completely honest, I’m feeling pretty intimidated by the size of the mess I have in front of me. But this story is one of my favorites, and it’s a really solid potential follow up to Edwin being the same teen lit type of story, so I’ve decided it…