R.L. LaFevers's Blog, page 17

I might go silent for the next week. I am in the throes o...

I might go silent for the next week. I am in the throes of Finish the First Draft Fever here and am obsessed and consumed by finishing the damn book. I will report back when I emerge victorious!

Transformative Change (Briefly!) Revisited

Someone asked me to explain the difference between change and transformative. The thing is, we change every day—in surface ways. We move from happy to sad or annoyed to bitter, patient to suffering. Those movements don't fundamentally change us; rather they are part of our human spectrum of emotions.

The transformative part comes in when we take that grief or bitterness or suffering and let it be the catalyst that impels us to a new state of being; that instead of experiencing our emotions as ...

Stewing Time

I got an email the other day from someone who had taken one of the workshops I gave at the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference a couple of years ago. He had a great question that I thought I'd talk about here.

In the workshop, and repeatedly on this blog, I talk about the importance of setting your manuscript down for a couple of months to get the distance needed to be able to see its flaws. His question was, when do you take this break? Especially if, as you're finishing up your first draft, yo...

Transformative Change

I love it when a number of things swirling about in different areas of my life all converge and make me sit up and pay attention.


And as I mentioned last week, I've been reading The Hero Within and in it the author talks about transformative change as we move through the different stages of our journey.

Transformative change. For some reason that phrase has really stuck with me, always in the back of my mind this week. Probably in no small part because I've reached the point in the manuscript...

Vulture Pigeons

No, they are not a new creature in one of my books, unfortunately.

My husband's ornithological activities have come home to roost in a decidedly creepy way. As I have mentioned before, we have quite a collection of birds who consider us the local dinery; lots of cute little brown birds and black birds whose names I don't know; mockingbirds (who always make me think of the Hunger Games now) quail (with button size babies!) and charming ring necked doves, even a woodpecker or two. But the last ...

Boredom Buster Award

Yowza! I was thrilled to learn from my editor that the Theodosia books have won the Family Fun Magazine Boredom Buster award for August! Family Fun is published by Disney, and the books appear in their August issue. Color me thrilled!

Here's a link to the online version:  Family Fun Boredom Buster Awards


Thank you muchly, Family Fun!

Character Growth and Personal Journeys

For me, one of the most satisfying parts of a book is often the character's transformative growth. All of my favorite writers strike me as exceptional students of the human condition, and it shows in their writing. However, sometimes stuff that we know intuitively, escapes us when it comes to wrestling with the nitty gritty logistics of arcing out a character's internal journey. We know a character must change or grow, attain some new level of awareness. But unless we have a child development...

World Premier--Nathaniel Fludd Four Cover! (Unicorns!)

My editor sent me this yesterday afternoon and it promptly chased all other thoughts from my mind and I just had to share. Isn't it beautimous?? ::very happy sigh::

I truly am the luckiest of authors...Once again, Kelly Murphy is a GeNiUs!


Plus I figured all of those suffering from way too much heat would enjoy looking at all that cool green forest...

Can We Pretend It's Still Monday?

I have spent the last three days laid low by an absolutely vicious stomach flu, then a migraine because I couldn't eat for two whole days. It wasn't a pleasantly indulgent kind of sick either—it was the kind where you lay there, staring at the back of your eyeballs, praying for deliverance.

But it is gone today—hurray!—and all the world is made fresh and new and hopeful again. That is the one lovely thing about suffering through illness—when it lifts, it really is like being born again. Plus? ...

Full Steam Ahead

Okay, so on Wednesday I got totally wadded up, slogging through far too many words and scenes that were clearly such vestigial tails of earlier drafts that I had to stop and do some serious trimming.

Over the last two days I've cut away pages and pages of deadwood. I had 340 pages and I cut away about 60 of those and another 60 will have to be rewritten from scratch, but I can use the existing scenes as an outline.

I've finally, finally, FINALLY figures out how the romance turns and more import...