Category: How I Finished My Novel
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How I Finished My Novel: Part Thirteen – I F***ING FINISHED IT
I cannot begin to describe how good it feels to have finished my novel. But I’m a writer, so I’m definitely going to try. Not to mention I have John in my head, telling me that’s my freaking job, which I also hear whenever I send a gif or emoji…
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How I Finished My Novel: Part Twelve – I Hated My Writing Coach
John – and everyone else who’s reading this — please know the title is definitely written dripping with sarcasm. I love my writing coach. The final part of finishing my novel was a final round of revisions. This round involved John, my wonderful writing coach, pushing me to justify sentences,…
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How I Finished My Novel: Part Eleven – I Put in the Work
“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy and that hard.” – Neil Gaiman I could almost just leave it there, with the words of one of my all-time favorite authors. But the…
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How I Finished My Novel: Part Ten – Deadlines, Deadlines, Deadlines
So now I’m going to talk about deadlines, which were a HUGE part of how I finished this freaking thing. When you have a publisher, the deadlines are set for you. (Or so I’ve heard anyway.) You have an actual contractual obligation to finish the book by a certain date.…
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How I Finished My Novel: Part Nine – I Sat in My Uncomfortable Emotions
The title of this post comes from a thing John (my amazing writing coach) told me to do. When I failed at writing my final three chapters, the biggest thing John told me I hadn’t done was continue to confront my uncomfortable emotions. Most of my novel (and maybe all…
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How I Finished My Novel: Part Eight – I Failed
My original deadline for finishing this round of edits was my birthday. Halfway through August. And I almost made it. It felt like every chapter was the hardest chapter yet and then finally it was the last three chapters. The last resolutions. The last bows to tie up. And I…
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How I Finished My Novel: Part Seven – Kill Your Darlings
I dealt a little with letting go in the previous post, but I wanted to go a little deeper into that. Because there are so many kinds of letting go I had to do while getting my novel to this point. Big kinds — like reworking whole chapters — and…
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How I Finished My Novel: Part Six – You Can Do Better
At the start of this revision process I talk a little about how John had me outline and get to know my characters better, and revising for me involved being okay veering away from my outline when the story called for it and getting to know my characters even better.…
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How I Finished My Novel: Part Five – First Revision Done
Hey all! So it’s been a rather long while since I updated this blog, so sorry about that. The good news is the reason I haven’t been posting blog posts is because I’ve been spending all of my writing time working on my novel. I SENT MY LAST TWO CHAPTERS…
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How I Finished My Novel: Part Four – Fast Draft
I have recently had a life change. Or more accurately, a job change. For the past couple months I’ve only been working about thirty hours a week at the job I had. This allowed me extra time to write, which means I’ve been making pretty steady progress. I’ve been completing…
Erin Lodes 