When I finally finished my first draft of my novel, it felt like a huge accomplishment. 100,000 words written in seven months with at least four hours per day devoted to the task. I had proved to myself that I could do it – I had beaten back the critical voice in my thoughts (fear of failure), the ridiculous doubt of whether this is what I wanted to devote my life to (fear of success),…
In today’s blog post, I am going to quote both Edward Snowden and Donald Trump in relation to China, and it’s going to make sense. This is the first installment of “Critical” Reading – a biweekly post in which I analyze and critique an article, a movie, an Internet comment, or something Donald Trump said. If you remember from the first Republican debate this year: Donald Trump stated, “This country is in big trouble. We…
I am writing this 65 minutes after the email was sent and 10 minutes after I read it to find out that I received another Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future contest. Writers of the Future is the largest and highest paying free entry science fiction contest and has involved several prominent science fiction authors (among them are Orson Scott Card and Dave Wolverton/Farland). The contest offers unpublished writers an amazing opportunity to have…
Hi all – I have revamped my website in an attempt to motivate myself to write more blog posts and have a more consistent web presence (shout out to my brother Ted for his excellent tech support). Along with this revamping came another smaller metaphysical revamping (i.e. existential crisis) of who I would strive to be online and what I would want to say. Many websites and online personas come up with a super laser focus…
This is an ode to all of my fellow novelists out there who get to answer this question almost daily, as well as to the people who ask this question. “Writing a novel is difficult” is the understatement of the year. Each genre has a different word count range. Young Adult (YA) runs from 55,000 – 70,000 words. For adult novels, between 80,000 and 90,000 is a good range. For science fiction/fantasy, over 100,000 words…
When I tell people I wrote a novel, the most common responses I receive fall into two categories: 1) I could never do that and 2) I’ve wanted to do that (but haven’t). When I hear that someone has always wanted to write, but hasn’t, my first thought is “Well, what is stopping you?” Some people like the idea of writing but not the practice of it. These people are focused on the ends rather…
My website is taking a new direction as both my blog and I transition from college and study abroad adventures to my professional writing career. On the technical side, I switched servers to my brother’s, so let me know if you experience any issues while visiting my website. I respond to all comments on posts and messages through the Contact Me form. Now that disclaimer is out of the way, I’d like to pick up…