Keeping Track of Multiple WIPs

Imagine this, you are super focused on the project in front of you, writing away creating a fabulous world and situations for your characters and then BOOM!, there is another idea, creeping into your mind, poisoning your current work in progress. Your writing slows, descriptions become generic, your characters are stuck because they don’t know what they are doing next.   This morning during my scheduled writing time I found myself switching over from my Fall of the Dawn draft to a random story idea that came to me a while back. Sure enough it did already have a Scrivener file, last save date was in June of 2016 and it was nothing more than a page of notes. I haven’t even thought about it since then. And, I’m not sure why it all of a sudden felt the need to crowd my mind this morning. (I was on a roll with Fall of … Read more

New Year, New Outlook

Last year I found myself overwhelmed with all the awesomeness I had planned to create. I’ve always dreamed big, usually too big for what I can handle because I tend to forget there are other parts to my life. It isn’t because of lack of organization or lack of desire that things don’t get finished when I hoped they would be, but because I’m not always realistic with my deadlines. I might plan out and schedule one project without first considering other projects that also need to be completed on top of family and home obligations. By the end of the week, month, or even year, I find that I’m left with a few half done and almost done projects. Why, because my client work always takes priority when it comes to work to be done, not to mention family and home obligations. Projects and plans for Infinite Reverie, Read at … Read more

13 Super Useful Books for Writers

13 Super Useful Books for Writers

Collectively, we are all writers. We all write something, regardless of what our goals or plans are, we are all writers. I’ve noticed there are so many resources out there, on the internet and in print, that seem to suggest there is a “best” way or even an “only” way to write. While their ideas and methods might work fantastically for them and for others, writing isn’t a one way or no way kind of process. Each and every single one of us has our own set of particulars in our process. I completely understand how frustrating it can be for a writer just starting to find their way, to feel overwhelmed with all the Bests. But how does one find their ideal process without first learning of others? I don’t have a definitive method for writing. I don’t have a one size fits all process for each type of writing I … Read more

3 Ways You Can Get to Know Your Characters

Whether you have one WIP or ten, two characters or one-hundred, staying true to who they really are, isn’t always easy. If a character does or says something out of character without a valid reason for it, it can throw readers off, or even completely out of the story. It can cause problems with believability and clarity. Not to mention, cause the reader to no longer like, understand, or even care about the character. It’s no wonder then, that we writers want to be sure we truly understand and know our characters in order to properly tell their story. Through my own research, there seems to be an unwritten scale for the level of knowledge the writer should know about the different types of characters. For main characters (or those with a point of view), we should know as much as, or even more than we know ourselves. For secondary characters … Read more

Project Tracking

Do you ever find yourself, working away at your current work in progress, only to have a new idea begin to brew? What do you do with that new idea? Especially if it keeps pulling at you? As of right now, I have one very large epic fantasy WIP. Book 1 is my number one fiction priority seeing as I’ve put a “no more excuses, it’s getting published in December of 2017” deadline on it. But I also have an active science fiction novella in the works and two short stories. I wrote the original first draft for the series novel in November of 2014. It has found itself shelved a lot over the past couple years.  In between working on it, I’ve started the novella, multiple short stories and a few partial first drafts for other full length novels. Not to mention having a few nonfiction pieces, freelance and client projects, and Infinite … Read more

Story Tracking Worksheets for the Non-Planner

I shall keep this post nice and short today in honor of the first day of NaNoWriMo so we can all get back to writing fast. You can grab your copy of the story-progress-worksheet right back there. Again this worksheet isn’t really for planning, but for post-writing. It’s a place to jot down important developments, ideas, or just notes of what you’ve already written. I keep mine right next to my computer at writing time. While it isn’t necessarily too difficult to go back through what I’ve written to find a name or “check” something when writing a later scene that needs previous scene information, I find once I start looking back, I keep looking back and eventually, I’m not moving forward. But when I only allow myself to use these worksheets to flip through to find that information, I’m not seeing exactly what I wrote, I’m only seeing the important … Read more

Tips for Writing that First Draft in 1 Month

For those of you who had decided early on that you would be participating in NaNoWriMo this year, the month of October might have seemed just as busy and stressful as you anticipate November to be. I’m not much of a planner when it comes to plotting out a story. But, this year, I’ve talked to and read how others have been working hard to plot everything out. Many have explained they hope this allows them the opportunity to just write in November. No need to figure things out on the fly and limit “writer’s block”. Everything is right there on the outline. I’ve mentioned it before, I discovered NaNoWriMo in 2014 during the last week of October. I had no time to really plan anything out. I was still deciding if it was something I wanted to try. We host Thanksgiving at our house (We also host Christmas Eve … Read more

A Letter to My Friends, and NaNo is Coming.

A Letter to My Friends   I haven’t done a thing lately but observe. I’ve found myself, a mental nomad, a wandering thinker, lost yet stuck. I’ve found myself stuck in a trap of writing and working on the same things others are discussing. I know, we all have our own voices, our own perspectives, and maybe different opinions and information based on our own experiences and expertise. But the sameness and repetition is bringing me down to a point of having too much information, too many suggestions and advice to really be able to move forward. How many articles, blog posts, and social media posts can one read on the same topic before it begins to confuse us? How many before what we set out to do, seems impossible to do, because instead of not having enough information, we have too much? Should we, those that write and talk … Read more

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Books, Free Course, Cool Stuff and More Coming Soon!

Sooo, how’ve ya been? Good I hope. The first thing I’d like to mention is that I’ve decided to separate Infinite Reverie’s social media from my own. If you currently follow me on any of the platforms, and would like to follow Infinite Reverie, hit the follow button again. They are now linked to Infinite Reverie’s instead of mine, those, I’ll continue to use as an author. It’s been crazy around here, a good crazy though. Here’s what we’ve been up to. Books First, and what I’m most excited about, my first published book will be available very, very soon! It’s a science fiction (with a little bit of the supernatural) novella, and will be available in e-book and paperback. Salvation: Winter’s Night follows Ella Kane and her friends as they find themselves unwilling participants in the ultimate destruction of the human race. With time running out, can the unnatural … Read more

Ever find yourself searching high and low for that idea you had for a story? Spring Cleaning for Your Writing, with free checklist may help.

Spring Cleaning for Your Writing?

Here in Illinois, it’s a real back and forth between being Winter out or being Spring out. One day it’s a whole 40 degrees out and the next 70, and then of course, back to 40. I mean, it could rain and snow in the same day, and it does. But we’re used to that here, it means Spring has begun. Each Spring many of us start the process of spring cleaning our homes. This year I’ve come across a few articles about this process in our homes, as well as business cleanses. I’ve decided Infinite Reverie could benefit from going through a business cleanse this year. All this talk about cleanses though got me thinking. Yes, it will be hard work but fairly easy to give my business a good cleaning, but what about my fiction writing? I don’t really classify it as a part of Infinite Reverie, those … Read more

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