New Year's Resolution

Happy (slightly belated) New Year! Since the beginning of December, I've been thinking of what writing resolutions I wanted to make in the coming year, but my future is a little uncertain at the moment. I'm still job hunting and have applied from everything from a supervisor job to overnight work to overseas work, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to devote to writing. That being said, I really want to finish my novella-in-verse this year, as well as complete a few other projects that involve more editing and planning and less actual writing. “Write everyday” is of course not my speed, and even “do something writing related everyday” can be difficult, so I’ve settled on weekly goals instead.

Writing Q & A #2

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Have another Q & A!

Q: Do you title your chapters, or just have “1″, “2″, “3″ etc.?

A: I almost always title my chapters. I like chapter titles because they can sort of set the theme or mood. Styx's titles often involved puns and word play, while Love & Chaos has each section titled to refer to which of the three duels to the death it features. In my alternate-history/fantasy/mystery WIP (AHFM), not only will each chapter have a title, I think I will also include a relevant, real-world quote under each, similar to what Cornelia Funke did in Inkheart. The novella-in-verse, however, will only be labeled "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2", and so for; each chapter, however, will have a slightly different version of the cover picture.

Writing Q & A #1

I have just recently moved back to Flagstaff, started working again at the Flagstaff City - Coconino County Public Library, applied for (and will apply) for several jobs, and turned in my last ever essay in my entire life! Needless to say, that's why this post is late!

Anyway, this post is actually one of three "ask" posts I created on Tumblr, but I thought it would be fun to share the answers here. At some point in the future, likely during another busy week, I will get around to the next two Q & A "asks", but for now, enjoy!

The Perils of Point of View

In the early stages of writing, there can be a lot of road blocks that prevent writers from getting into their stories. Most people seem to struggle with something like not having a plot figured out, or not having a good opening scene, but for me, the biggest struggle when beginning a new project is pinning down a point of view, or POV. While I advise the aforementioned writers to just wing it or to write later scenes, respectively, there isn’t really a work around for POV. You can’t write a text-based story without a POV.

Thoughts on Novels-in-Verse

I'm writing a novel(la)-in-verse, but when I tell people that, many of them wonder what I'm talking about. This isn't too surprising, given that the vast majority of novels-in-verse are written only for children and teens, and are a fairly new phenomenon, but I think they might be a little more common that most people believe.