M.C. Muhlenkamp's Blog, page 6

Emotions: A Writer’s Best Fuel

Feelings suck sometimes, especially the bad ones.   They mess with your head, with your confidence, with your optimism. They can wreck havoc in as little as a few minutes, and if left unattended they will rain disappointment and frustration over your head like a cartoon cloud.   They are also good, necessary, even if […]

The Dreadful Outline

It certainly has been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve been struggling with keeping up on my posts, wanting to share thoughts, and not quite finding the time to do so. After receiving feedback from my beta readers a few months back, I locked myself inside a novel-editing-only mental room and I am barely emerging from […]

Finding the Right Agent for Your Book

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch an agent by the toe, if he hollers … blah blah blah.   The past month has gone by in a complete blur of utter confusion and chaos. But enough about my personal life, we all know life is hard, boohoo, Waa, Waa. I’ll stop now. This last week I’ve […]

The Hermione Granger’s Beaded Handbag for Writers

First off I’d like to apologize. In my previous post, the one I ranted about Disneyland Zombies, I promised I would share (within the week) a reference sheet with all the writing tools I kept on hand while working on my manuscript.   Well, it’s been way longer than that.   The last month has […]

Disneyland Turns Capable Adults Into The Walking Dead

First off, Happy New Year!   For the past five days I’ve been lounging, sleeping in, and enjoying some relaxed fun with my family. Well deserved, too. After a full week of complete chaos, sick kiddos, sick husband, sick infant, hardly any sleep due to the sickness galore, a manuscript to finish, and a Disneyland […]

Self-doubt + Crazy + Fear = Writer

One more week …   I think I am going to die.   Seriously, what kind of person would do this to herself? Who in her right mind sets the goal to finish a book in two months with three children, a job, and every major holiday of the year in the way? Really, who? […]

The Failure of Success

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." - Robert Collier Success. Such an interesting word. I don’t know about you, but I personally have a love-hate relationship with that word. What is success anyway? At what point in our life can we consider ourselves successful? I’ve come across a […]

Time To Stick To Your Guns … or Pens

If I sat down to count how many times I’ve felt overwhelmed, discouraged, or altogether reluctant to continue pursuing a goal, I probably wouldn’t be able to count all of them. You probably wouldn’t either. Not because it never happens. Quite the contrary, it happens way too often to keep count. Sometimes it is our […]

Pizza Power and The Massacre of The Machines

I am not embarrassed to admit that this week I seriously considered drowning my phone in the toilet. I nearly did, too. My computer crashed several times also, before it finally gave up the ghost, which made the window overlooking a precipice in the kitchen seem quite conveniently located. After a painstakingly arduous process I […]

Deadlines, Skeletons, and Other Writing Maladies

So, it’s been roughly a week since my T-minus goal started (finishing my YA novel by December 31st). Granted, I’ve been working on the thing for about three years, so I’ve had quite a head start. But as you already know, I was tempted to drop the project when NaNoWriMo came along, which led me […]