Molly Ringle's Blog, page 10

14 days of writing tips, Day 4: Outline it. Or don't.

4.     Outline it. Or don’t.

Once you’ve chosen what your fiction will be about, how do you start writing? Well, this is where it comes down to the question: are you going to be a plotter, or a pantser?

Being a plotter has worked for me a lot of times, if I need to figure out what this story even is. If it’s going to be on the complicated side and/or my initial idea is still hazy, I benefit from writing out a synopsis of how things might go. (This always gets chang...

14 days of writing tips, Day 3: Don't write it unless you love it.

Welcome to day 3 in fiction-writing Ideas Off The Top of My Head! Today's tip...

3.     Don’t write it unless you love it.

When choosing what to write your story about, pick the idea (perhaps from your story idea file) that excites you right now the most. Not what you think will sell the best, or what your friend says would be really cool to read, or what would make your high school English teacher proudest. Unless you get a crazily rabid fan base (which most of us...

14 days of writing tips, Day 2: Keep a story idea file

Welcome back to day 2! (See yesterday for day 1.) Today's fiction-writing tip:

2. Keep a story idea file.
You probably come up with a cool idea for a story from time to time, but are too busy to do anything with it, and in fact aren’t sure you’ll ever use it. But still, it is a cool idea…so write it down! Keep a story idea file. I use a regular old Word document, but you can use a notebook if you’re old-school, or a note-keeping app on your phone, or whatever you li...

14 days of writing tips, Day 1: Analyze stories you love

As I’m between book projects and feeling antsy about it, I am turning my mind not only to the next book I ought to write (which I’m still figuring out), but to writing other stuff in the meantime. Such as blog posts. So what I’ve decided to do, to give myself some writing-related homework, as well as food for thought for anyone who might be interested, is fourteen days of writing tips. I’ll compose one brief post each day for the next two weeks, on the subject of writi...

The Goblins of Bellwater: coming this year

Hi everyone,

A very belated happy new year! I'm glad to have this news to share with you today: my new novel The Goblins of Bellwater, though it won't be out until fall, is at least up for pre-order now on Amazon and other sites, and you can admire the cover art in the meantime:

If you're a Goodreads user, I also encourage you to add the book to your shelves over there. It's no commitment or cost, and it will help your friends learn about it, and lead to more readers being inter...

Good in 2016

It’s been easy for everyone to bemoan how much 2016 sucked. I don’t need to rehash the more traumatizing parts of the news for you.

Instead I’m going to write a post of things that were good in 2016. For me, at least.

Of my novel-writing projects:
Immortal’s Spring was released in June, and wrapped up my Persephone-myth-based trilogy. By that time I had also finished writing The Goblins of Bellwater, about which you’ll hear more soon, and started writing (rewriting,...

"So long, Princess."

Look at news, see Carrie Fisher has died.

Step 1: Don't cry.

Step 2: Fail step 1.

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out..."

Carrie, you were unvarnished and eccentric and troubled and hot and smart and sassy, and showed us that a female icon can be all those things at once. Thank you.

Love to her friends and family, and to all the hurting fans whom 2016 has trampled thoroughly. (Shout-out to George Michael's memory too...sigh.)

Figgy pudding is important, people

While (badly) playing songs on piano tonight from my book of Christmas sheet music, I found myself amused, as I am every year, by the repeated insistence on figgy pudding in "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." I mean, it's the subject of three of the four verses. So I tweeted about that, and got an even more amusing response out of the blue within minutes.




Speaking of holiday carols: as someone slightly more inclined toward paganism than Christianity (though I have a Christmas tree...

My random notes on Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

I have finally caught up to the rest of the Netflixing world and watched “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.” I give it a B on the whole. It rarely hit the perfection of the best Gilmore Girls episodes of the past, and often felt aimless (much like its characters’ lives right now), but it had its thoroughly charming moments and ended strong. Well, ended on a cliffhanger, of course, but…we were warned.

Below, my notes in order, jotted down as I watched. SPOILERS, obvsl...

Three snack-sized posts about Persephone, Hades, and Hermes

This month Persephone's Orchard is a free download as an ebook (see Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and other sites too), and I've been contributing guest posts on my take on Greek mythology to many lovely book bloggers to help spread the word.

Since the posts are fun and brief and a nice diversion from the news, here's a roundup of them for anyone interested:

10 Things I Like About Persephone. E.g., "She has an interesting marriage story..."

10 Things I Like About Hades. For one: &...