I know the temptation. That temptation to just change one more little word. To read through the manuscript one more time — Just In Case. The temptation to tinker endlessly with a manuscript because it just doesn’t feel perfect. I get it. I do. I’ve had that...
Buried in the Slushpile
A Picture Book Has How Many Pages?
If you type “how many pages does a picture book have” in a search engine, nearly every result will tell you that there are 32. So, are Picture Books 32 Pages? Yes, and also no. Wait, hear me out. Ok, technically, yes, picture books are 32 pages. Like almost all print...
New Year, New Writing Goals – Part 4
We may have answered all of questions and set great goals, but the thing is we have to follow through. And that’s the hardest part, even harder than figuring out our goal in the first place. So, we’re going to have to Stay Motivated. First we’re going to keep the...
New Year, New Writing Goals – Part 3
So far in our goal setting we’ve figured out what we want and how we’ll do it, but there’s one final question. Question 3: When will I do it? The truth is all the plans in the world won’t get you to your goal if you can’t find a time to implement them. You need to...
New Year, New Writing Goals – Part 2
Last time we thought about what we wanted to achieve with our goals. This week we’re going to ask ourselves the next question in our goal setting: Question 2: How will I do it? We made goals that are actionable, but how exactly are we going to do them? We’re going to...
New Year, New Writing Goals – Part 1
The Earth has spun around the Sun one more time, and you know what that means. Time to restart our goals for the year. The thing is, we often don’t make goals we can actually accomplish. At least, I used to make goals that I couldn’t actually accomplish. So a while...
Madeline’s Tips for Writing a Ton in a Short Time
Sometimes you don’t have tons of time to produce lots of writing. You may have run up against a hard deadline. You may be trying to build your self-published backlist. You may be participating in #NANOWRIMO and trying to write a whole novel in a single month. Whatever...
2023 Impromptu #NANOWRIMO Schedule and Events with Madeline
It's almost upon us … #NANOWRIMO is almost here. For those of you that don't know, every November authors get ambitious and try to write an entire novel (or at least 50k words of one) in one month. And not just any month—November, the month that officially kicks off...
One Page Summary: Questions to Ask
One page summaries can be deceptively simple. After all, you’re just distilling thousands of words into 500. What could go wrong? Ask any author that’s sat down to write a one page summary only to have it be five pages, and they’ll tell you just how difficult it can...