Author: Sarra Cannon

NaNo WriMo is officially one week in, and I have really enjoyed it. Right now, I am sitting at around 9,000 words, which means that I am a little bit behind. In truth, I had more written, but then I deleted half a chapter. I know that is against the rules because we aren’t supposed to be editing ourselves just yet, but honestly… that half a chapter was complete crap. And once I cut it out, the writing came much easier. By midnight tonight I need to have 11,669 words. If I do, then I get a little reward I…

Well, as of Halloween, it is apparently now Christmas Holiday Shopping time. All of the commercials are starting to have that little holiday theme or the little message thrown in that “This is a great gift for the Holidays!!”. Just thinking about spending all that money makes me nauseated. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas. I love the music and the beautiful decorations. I love Christmas trees and putting up lights and ornaments. I love seeing my family and eating great food. It’s just that this year, somehow, it seems cumbersome. There’s so much expectation involved, and now that…

This weekend we went to G’s ten year High School Reunion. We didn’t have to drive too far, only about an hour from home, and we had a really nice hotel room for the night. The event itself was fun, even if the food was a little bit disappointing, but the best part was just being with G. We had quite a bit to drink, but not so much that we were sick (not that night anyway), and we got dressed up. After staying in most nights or only dressing in casual clothes for a long stretch of time, it…

I read about NaNo WriMo last year, but it was already over at that point. Well, this year, I am signed up early and ready to go. In case you are wondering, NaNo WriMo stands for “National Novel Writing Month”. For 10 years now, people all over the states have been getting together online and in person every November to work on the goal of writing one 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. That means writing an average of 1667 words every single day. Including weekends. Including Thanksgiving Holidays. On the sidebar here, I have put a participant badge…

I have been giving plotting and outlines a lot of thought over the past few days. Is it better, I wonder, to spend time at the beginning of a project plotting out the storyline, writing down everything you can about your characters and getting to know them inside and out? Or is it best to take a more organic approach and let an idea sweep you away, counting on your imagination and the characters themselves to guide you? I have read a lot of books about writing over the past year or so, and most of them say that it’s…

Well, I did it. On Saturday I mailed off my very first manuscript to a publisher in New York! I think I must have read through each page a hundred times just to make sure there were no mistakes. Of course, I ended up printing a lot of pages because everytime I read through the whole package, I’d find some tiny thing wrong here and there and have to reprint that page after I made some corrections. I feel good about what I sent off, though. I know the spelling and format is good. I know the story is at…