Freedom and Framework: Story Planning for Pantsers

New for 2018! Flying by the seat of your pants to write the first draft for your book feels so freeing. It’s a time to play, to experiment, to try out new ideas. What fun! But diving into a project as big as a novel without any plan at all often means a lot of extra work after the draft

Prep for NaNoWriMo the Bare Bones Way

New workshop for 2015! Are you a plotter? A panster? A little of both? Have no idea yet? No matter what your writing style, the bare bones method of prepping for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November or Camp NaNoWriMo in July can help you do just enough prep work for your novel-writing adventure that you enter the challenge

Writing the Romantic Novella

New workshop for 2015! In this workshop you will learn what a novella is, how it’s more than word count that separates it from a novel, and how to successfully craft one of your own. Lesson topics include: Scope and Pacing, Character Development, Conflict, Plot and Format. At the end of the workshop, you will have a brief outline of

Grow A Book: Turn Your Story Idea Into a Workable Plot

This workshop is now retired, but I have created an ebook version of it that includes all the lessons and exercises from the workshop. ***Click HERE to order from Amazon*** (Also available at several other major online ebook retailers such as Kobo, B&N, and iBooks). Kick-start a new writing project, or breathe life into an old one! Do you have

How Scrivener Helps My Writing Process — Part 2

In Part 1, I talked about Scrivener’s wonderful organizational features such as the Binder, drag-and-drop scenes and index cards. Today I’m going to continue with the overview of the main screen and then talk about a few of the other not-so-obvious features: the corkboard, the project/word count tracker, the handy thesaurus, the name generator and the outline view. I’ll also