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NaNo Rebellion

Neil Siemers - November 23, 2015

I didn’t mean to end up as a rebel this year. It just kinda… happened. My first novel concept completely fell through, none of my backup ideas had enough substance to become a novel, and even my idea to write a mini-anthology of related short stories fell through. I had to do something. So I […]

Wait, Where Is This Train Headed?

Ashley M. Hill - November 30, 2012

Since I’d already hit my word count goals for NaNo, I decided that I wanted to finish the novel before November closed for the year. I only had a few scenes left, so its been looking good. Then I did a quick outline and realized that my climatic explosion isn’t actually my climax; its the […]

On Writing First Drafts

Aspen Junge - January 21, 2012

Call me a traditionalist, but for a difficult first draft, it has to be paper. A pencil, perhaps a nice fountain pen. The creative part of writing, pinning down that first draft, is a tactile, sensory experience. There’s the resistance of graphite across the page, the sound of paper rustling, the concreteness of pages stacking […]