Welcome

Welcome to my official blog! I'm the author of Winterborn, a middle grade fairy tale. Click on the Winterborn tab to read a description and the first chapter of the book.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

You Can't Get There from Here

I am currently writing a story for adults, and everything was going swimmingly until I was almost at the end of the story, but I didn't feel right about it.

This is usually when I go to a brainstorm document and just start talking to myself about the problem, the ideas for the solution and why they wouldn't work. That's when I realized that the reason my ending didn't feel right was because I hadn't set it up right.

In order for the ending to work, I had to plant these seeds earlier in the story, but I hadn't. That's probably why the story felt out of balance. I had building tension and things happening that needed to happen, but it wasn't enough. Although the story was good, the ending wasn't fitting because, basically, I couldn't get there from where I was.

I needed to go back to the beginning and start setting things up so that when this ending happened, it would totally make sense. Instead it was almost as if I had cheated and threw in something off the wall because I'm the writer, and I can do what I want.

Bottom line: the ending has to be set up from the beginning.

Friday, March 10, 2017

The Virtue of Boredom


I'm sure I'm showing my age to say that I came up in the kind of educational setting where you sat still, you listened, and you took notes. Most students today won't listen, can't sit still, and have no idea how to take notes, but it's not their fault.

I was one of the lucky ones. I had a high school teacher who had both chalkboards (again, showing my age here) full when we walked into class. When everyone had finished copying all of the notes on the first board and moved to the second one, he erased the board and continued adding more notes. That's how I really learned to outline.