One of my favorite story arcs is the "Underdog Sports" structure. Except when it has actual sports in it--then it bores me to death. But, give me the underdog sports story in space or on a pirate ship or with a ragtag group of criminals, and I will become obsessed. That's what The Book of… Continue reading The Underdog (Or Why Boba Fett Didn’t Work for Me)
This week I decided to say, "Screw it!" to finishing my first draft. I compiled what I had and converted it to an eBook format for my Kindle, and for the past week, I've been reading it and making notes on what needs to be fixed. And oh, boy, is there A LOT that needs… Continue reading My Book is Now on Kindle! (Sort of…)
Last November, I won NaNoWriMo for the first time in years and years of trying. I walked into the month with just shy of 50k in Dragontouched, the novel I've been working on for way too long, and at the end of November, I wracked up another 50k to round that out to a solid… Continue reading NaNoWriMo Burned Me Out
I officially submitted my resignation as a teacher today. I'm finishing out the school year--for my students, for my team, and for myself--so I still have a few months to go, but I'm not coming back after this school year. I've given six years of my life to this profession, and leaving is incredibly bittersweet.… Continue reading I Quit My Job Today
Over the past two years, I have gone through a massive transformation in my writing process as an author. I've spent years (not gonna lie, probably close to a decade by now) working on the same story--writing and rewriting and cutting words and writing some more. The story is nowhere close to my original idea,… Continue reading Back to My Blogging Roots
You know how you can sit down to write, and everything just falls into place? Your focus is perfect, and nothing can keep your fingers from dancing across the keyboard as you rack up an amazing word count? Yeah, I don't know that feeling either. If you do, though, and you have the writing focus… Continue reading My Greatest Writing Weakness
April is Camp NaNoWrimo, which is basically like normal NaNoWriMo but with fewer rules. You get to choose your word count goals (instead of the required 50,000) in order to win, and you're also assigned a cabin, just like summer camp, so it's easier to find a community. It's cute and fun, and the writing… Continue reading How to Write Faster: An Experiment
I really need to work on writing fluency. That's what I discovered last month. It was a decent writing month, and I hit the goals that I set for myself (mostly), but every time I wrote, I kept struggling with how long I could actually sit down and concentrate on writing. So that's what I've decided I'm going to focus on for April, and in fact, the rest of the year. I'm going to experiment and try different strategies other writers recommend to help build writing fluency.
What a month. It's the shortest month of the year, but between teacher burnout and the Texas Snowpocalypse of 2021, it easily felt like the longest month. Understandably, I didn't get much writing in for February. I started the month off with 36,504 words and ended with a whopping 36,828. That's a grand total of… Continue reading February Writing Wrap Up
Look. We all know what went down in the year 2020. It was a year for the books, and I don't mean for writing them. I still haven't finished the manuscript I've been working on for years now, and I'm not even the slightest bit mad. There were days in 2020--no matter how few-- that… Continue reading 6 Writing Lessons from 2020
K. N. Dyer Books 