Quinn Blogs

I’ve abandoned my 1000-word-a-day goal, but that’s a good thing. Now I’m sprinting for the finish line. In the last three days I’ve written something like 5,000 words and I’m almost to the big climactic climax of the story. There’s a lot that goes on in the end of this book; it may need to be streamlined when the time comes for revision. I’m doing my best not to worry about that yet.

This is the point, for me, when writing begins to feel like mild insanity. The story starts to follow me everywhere and distracts me when I’m trying to have conversations. I wake up from convoluted dreams starring my characters and plot points (once, when I was writing my first novel, I swear I had a dream in text. No joke) and I have trouble falling back [...]

I just passed the 200 page mark yesterday. It’s a good feeling, but it’s not as exciting as passing 100 pages or 50,000 words. And nothing is as exciting as getting to the last page and typing the wondrous words “The End.”

This has been pretty consistent for me through the writing of all three of my novels. My level of excitement can be charted like so:

Yes, I’m an xckd fan. But I think knowing and expecting the ups and downs of the writing process can be valuable. Optimism and energy will flag as you go along; that’s just the nature of the beast. You’ll have moments when you wonder if you’re just wasting your time, writing a bunch of drivel no one will ever want to read. And even when you’re not stewing in self-doubt, sometimes writing a [...]

I just hit the 45,000-word mark, which puts me halfway toward my anticipated total length of 90,000 words. Or I should say initially anticipated; I really feel like I’m more than halfway through the book at this point. I just started a big, multi-chapter scene that forms the end of my more-or-less second act, and after that there will be a few more flashbacks, a buildup to the big climax, and then that’s pretty much it. Chances are the first draft is going to be more like 80,000 words. Maybe even less. When I was first conceiving of Hubris I saw it as something much like Good Omens, an ensemble-cast comedy adventure with plenty of quirky side characters and funny asides (I also saw it as a graphic novel – more on that in a future post). And while I’m still very much [...]

Writing continues, even while I’m on vacation; no, I’m not that much of a workaholic, it’s just that I’ve got a lot of down time in the hotel and it seemed like a good opportunity to get some writing in. I have another trip coming up in a week and a half, and the laptop will be staying home for that.I just passed the 40,000 word mark yesterday, a nice big number (although not as satisfying as passing the 100-page mark a few weeks ago. That’s when it stops feeling like a long story and more like a proper novel). My Nanowrimo instincts are still going strong – one of the most important things I’ve learned is not to revise as I go along, even when I know that my chronology is a bit messed up and the entire [...]

No, no it wasn’t; it was Jane Smith’s, and her post on the topic is definitely worth a read.

Plagiarism is a contentious issue for everyone involved in publishing, but it seems to have a unique resonance for the unpublished author. Aspiring writers have a serious fear of having their ideas stolen; this is probably because they assume that, without having published anything, they’ll never be able to prove that they wrote their book in the first place. It’s easy to feel vulnerable when you’re unpublished. The publishing world can be a pretty intimidating thing, so it’s natural that writers have trust issues when they’re first sending out their queries. As some have explained, though, this fear is largely unfounded. There are plenty of scammers in the literary world, but they’re not interested in your manuscript, just your money.

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