Scribbled Fiction

Confession: I'm not even sure if my writing process counts as a good writing process or not. But it works for me, and if you hate it I never said you had to do it with me, so go suck a lemon, I guess. My process has come a long way since I started writing at eleven. Another confession: I didn't even know what plot was at that age, so.... yeah. But these days, writing has almost fallen into a nice consistent process for me. Keyword being almost. I haven't thought through how I'm going to arrange this, so I suppose I'll just go one step at a time. Ideas (The part where you get an idea and start thinking about it) Basically, I always have too many story ideas and snippets in a big red folder on my desk, and once the idea has stewed around in my brain enough and feels complete enough, then I pull it out of the tangled web of other ideas and start working on it. Under no circumstances  do start on a novel  right after I come up with the idea.  Any tim...

They're in space. Can I say duct tape? A real question I asked my sister a couple of months ago (to clarify, I was writing a sci-fi novel at the time). Because, I mean, this is a long time in the future. Would it even still be called duct tape? Her response: Of course my characters would have duct tape. After all, it's duct tape . Plus, if Drax suggested Scotch tape, which has only a quarter of the popularity duct tape has, they have duct tape in space. And I needed something for my characters to tape their ship back together with. But anyway. I saw a similar question in a Facebook group this week, and I keep thinking about it. I have a good bit to say on the subject, so I might as well dump everything here while it's still fresh in my mind. The question was posted in the Facebook group Your Write Dream (my favorite Facebook writing group, by the way). It was a pretty long question, so I've decided not to copy and paste, but the basic gist was: If you...

Photo by Lum3n.com from Pexels Apologies for all the posts on editing, but I am right in the middle of a third draft, and it's just... *prolonged bestial scream* Excuse me. Editing isn't as hard as it used to be for me, believe me. It used to be like pulling my literal hair out. It's a little easier now. But it's still not super easy. My second draft wasn't even complete before I realized it was going the wrong direction and I had to start over (thus the third draft). My absolute bane of editing, though, is rewriting. I'm fine rewriting something in a different way. I thrive like that. The first time I was editing something, I didn't even know it was editing. I was just like 'Ooh, what if I add  this  to it while I'm typing up the longhand pages?' And it was AWESOME. I still love doing this. It's so much easier to seamlessly add stuff in when you're typing it up because the flow is already in your brain. It's an  amazing ...

Photo by PhotoMIX Ltd. from Pexels I know a thing or to about moving. Don't even try to argue with me about this. I have lived in five different places over the course of my life. Granted, all of the places I've lived have been in Maryland, but moving is moving, y'all. Not to mention, all of my friends but, like, four, have been military and moved around a lot themselves. And I've had a lot of friends in my life. So I would call myself an expert on the subject. (straitens invisible tie) Now have a seat, imma tell you what moving is really like. 1. Moving is HARD.        First, you're leaving the lovely house you had before. Everything you like about your house, all the places that have such fond memories? They're gone. And in some cases, the house might even be getting demolished (this happened with one of my houses). For another thing, you're uprooting everything. If you're moving to an entirely new place like a different state, you have to ...