Don’t Go to Sleep

I’m in the middle of the latest revision of DON’T GO TO SLEEP, and I thought I’d take a minute to discuss how revising a novel is different than the other revision projects I work on. With a normal (non-novel) revision, it’s usually easy for me to keep the entire project in my head. Even when I was working on my 150 page thesis, it was divided into a series of smaller chapters, each of which stood more or less independent from the others. (It also helped that the arguments I was making in the thesis stayed consistent.) Revising a

Someone mentioned to me the other day that it’s been a while since I’ve done a writing update on here, so I thought I’d take a minute and correct that oversight. There was a space of about a month where I found myself (for the first time I can remember) pretty much unable to write. I was feeling really overwhelmed, and I was at sort of a pause point in multiple projects, and so it felt like there was too much inertia to overcome. Thankfully I’m through with that for now, it seems. Multiple different irons in the fire. Let

I’m up to my eyeballs right now trying to get the latest draft of my next book (DON’T GO TO SLEEP) finished and off to my editor. It’s at times like these that I’m really reminded of just how much more work I end up doing on writing. When I’ve got an already busy schedule filled with things like “being a library director,” “being an active church member,” “being a present father and husband,” and “being a home owner,” tossing in a writing deadline is enough to make everything else feel like the wheels are about to fall off. So

I love writing books. Don’t get me wrong: it can often be a frustrating process, and it’s definitely time consuming, but I love writing books more than I love reading books, and that should say something right there. There are many things about the book writing process that I enjoy. Plotting the thing out in the first place is a lot of fun, and I have a great time figuring out plot snares that come up. I love being able to go back in time in the book and write my way out of a jam. Climaxes are always a