The Three Stages of Editing

Let’s be honest – your book is going to spend far longer in the ‘editing’ stage than the ‘drafting’ stage. The blank page might be daunting, and spending hours deliberating over outlines or character sheets might feel like the most agonizing part of crafting a manuscript, but the sheer reality is that editing, in all…

5 Lies Writers Tell Themselves

Let’s be honest – writing is hard. Sometimes just summoning the energy to sit down and write even a few hundred words feels like the hardest thing in the world – half the battle is fought between the fridge and the desk (but seriously, chocolate is definitely what I needed to conquer this blog post)….

Three Simple Questions to Tackle that ‘Stuck’ Scene

Recently, I gave some advice to a fellow writer and blogger who was stuck on a particular scene in her novel. We’re often prone to random bursts of writer’s block, miniature in size but crippling in nature, where we run into a brick wall at a scene and cannot see a way out. I’m here…

Word Counts of Popular YA Books

As I started drafting my new WIP – a YA sci-fi thriller – I began wondering what word count I should aim for. Writing towards a word count might not work for everybody, but having a rough goal in mind certainly helps me when I’m sketching out chapters and undertaking my first draft. Unfortunately, word…