Kaye Dacus's Blog, page 32

#FirstDraft60 Day 4: Story Structure & Timeline #amwriting #nanoprep #nanowrimo

If you’ve worked through the assignments for the last few days, your Story Bible should be mostly set up and ready to go. Today, we’re going to add two additional, important sections to it. If you’re just joining us, you can catch up with the previous posts here. Story Synopsis/Structure One of the things we’re […]

#FirstDraft60 Day 3: The Story Bible—Characters, Setting, Props #amwriting #NaNoPrep #NaNoWriMo

Welcome to Day 3 of FirstDraft60 for 2016! If you’ve fallen behind, or if you’ve started late, don’t worry, there will be time this month to play catch-up. Yesterday, you created your revisions notebook, style sheet, and research repository. In case you’ve never done this before, those are three major components of your Story Bible—the […]

#FirstDraft60 Day 2: Setting Up a Revisions Notebook, Style Sheet, and Research Repository

Part of doing a challenge like FirstDraft60 (for writing) or Whole30 (a food plan) is making sure that you’ve done as much preparation ahead of time as possible—so that during the actual challenge period (the 30 days of writing in November), you can focus on writing your story because you’re already organized and ready to […]

#FirstDraft60 2016: Day 1—Determining Your Commitment and Motivation with Guided Questions

Welcome to the official first day of #FirstDraft60–2016, a sixty-day challenge to plan and write a manuscript first draft. I hope you spent some time yesterday ruminating on the questions posed and reviewing the planned schedule for the challenge. Today, the questions dig a lot deeper into why and how we’re going to do this […]

#FirstDraft60: Day Zero—Are You Ready to Write a Story? #amwriting #nanoprep #nanowrimo

If you didn’t participate last year, or if you haven’t had a chance to explore the posts, here’s the explanation/introduction to what the #FirstDraft60 challenge is. Here’s a link to a .pdf file (opens in a new tab) of this year’s calendar—but be aware that it’s subject to change. I’ll also be posting a schedule […]

Don’t Forget: #FirstDraft60 2016 starts 10/02/16! #amwriting #nanoprep #nanowrimo

In case you missed the announcement earlier this week, here’s the original post: Starting Sunday, October 2, I’m challenging myself—and y’all—to an audacious project: to plan, prep, and write a first draft in 60 days. A few of you followed along when I tried this last year (and we all fizzled out there at the […]

Books Read in 2016: ‘Diamonds or Donuts’ by Lucie Ulrich (3 stars)

Diamonds or Donuts by Lucie Ulrich My rating: 3 stars Book Summary: Sarah Alexander’s marriage to millionaire Logan Montgomery is put on hold when Logan is offered the opportunity to go on an extended archaeological dig in Egypt. Though not happy with his decision, Sarah supports her fiancé, despite the fact she’s already given up […]

#FirstDraft60 2016 starts 10/02/16 — A Writing Challenge!

Starting Sunday, October 2, I’m challenging myself—and y’all—to an audacious project: to plan, prep, and write a first draft in 60 days. A few of you followed along when I tried this last year (and we all fizzled out there at the end). This year, however, I have a little more motivation to get this […]

Ransome Trilogy Readers—I Need Your Feedback!

Readers of my Ransome Trilogy, I need your help with my new story! As many of you know, I’ve been working on a new Royal Navy–Regency romance novel this year, The Spymaster’s Daughter. After several months of being “stuck” (because I tried to write it “by the seat of my pants,” the way I used […]

I’ve Lost that Loving Feeling (for writing)…

I just posted this on Facebook, but thought I’d expand my reach as much as I could by posting it here, too. I need your help—your support. I’ve forgotten what it means to love writing. To love creating characters and storylines and conflicts and happy endings. If you’ve ever been in a place in which […]