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How I Write, mystery, YA fiction

Projects on the Horizon

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JV future projects

As I wrap up the Haunted Halls: Winter’s Cavern trilogy, I’m already looking ahead to what’s next this year! I don’t want months and months to go by without publishing something, because let’s be honest, I’m sad when I don’t have work coming out regularly.

What you might not know about me is that one of my early writing loves was fantasy. Writing YA mystery sort of happened to me by accident–I’d wanted something gothic and creepy, and the mystery aspects just sort of…happened.

All that to say, I have some ideas of what I want to publish, including a fantasy novel that is already drafted and just needs a few tweaks. I’ll be talking more about it, and another YA fantasy, over the next few months, as well as a nonfiction book about writing that I’m super excited about, as well!

As far as more Haunted Halls books, I’m hoping to do those, too, but with the two fantasy novels coming up, the mystery will take more of a back seat in 2019. Although I’ll be working on Haunted Halls this year, they won’t be in a publishable state until 2020.

So, those are my plans! Some are a little ambitious, like revising these two big fantasy novels and finishing that writing craft book, but I’m really stoked to get these projects finished and out in the world!

How I Write, YA fiction

How I Write: Outlines

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JV How I Write

Today’s writing topic is all about outlines and how they work for me. I’m not going to stand here (sit here, really–still haven’t put together my new standing desk) and tell you that every writer must use an outline. For me, it helps. I stress out if I don’t know where the story’s going, and it freezes me up. The issue of “not feeling inspired or surprised” with an outline doesn’t affect me, because I’m constantly being surprised by what my characters do, and I often have to change up the outline a little bit (or a lot a bit) as I go.

What does my outline look like? It starts off as scrawled bullet points in a notebook, and I usually think each bullet point is a chapter, but most of the time I smoosh them together so that several bullet points, or actions, go into each chapter.

Once I’m done with that, I type them up and print them out. Then I can refer to the print-out easily while I’m drafting. This is a pretty messy process, usually, with additional notes scribbled in. And if I get stuck, I sometimes doodle in the margins.

JV outline pieces

This happened a lot in the typed outline for the Haunted Halls: Winter’s Cavern trilogy, and you can see an example above. 🙂

As far as how I structure my books, it depends on the book. Is it a standalone, like the YA fantasy I’ll be publishing later this year? Or is it a series of books that need to tie together, like the two Haunted Halls trilogies? Each individual book, regardless of how long it is or whether it’s a part of a series, follows the three-act structure and from there, I follow Blake Snyder’s format that he shared in his book Save the Cat. It’s a pretty straightforward way of outlining a book, and I’ve written several novels with his format as a guideline.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful or at least mildly interesting to someone! Questions? Stick ’em in the comments!

reading, YA fiction

Best Reading Haunts

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You can read books in a tree

You can read them in your bed.

You can read them at the beach

or while standing on your head.

Where do you do your reading_

I prefer the sofa with a nice fluffy blanket and a mug full of tea nearby. Cookies are a plus.

Here are some other awesome places to read books…

  • treehouse
  • cavern (with adequate lighting of course)
  • bed
  • airplane
  • beach
  • library
  • cabin
  • hammock
  • castle tower
  • poolside

Where do you prefer to do your reading?

How I Write, YA fiction

How I Write: Tracking Word Count

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IMG_2575

One thing that keeps me going while writing is keeping track of my word count! Having a production goal–whether it’s for words, scenes, chapters, or pages–keeps me more accountable to myself.

Because let’s face it–we can tell everyone in the world that we’re writing a book, but nobody can actually make us sit down and do it.

For me, having a daily goal and a place to record it can help immensely. If I can make it into a chart and make it colorful, even better! I love seeing the chart change with new colors after every time I check in.

While charting scenes worked for me this time, I also like tracking word counts even by doing something as simple as writing down the number of words each day in my calendar. It’s not as pretty, but still effective.

….

And…I just searched through my entire bedroom and every other notebook-hiding area (book cases in the basement, little buffet table in the dining room, poetry shelf, closets) looking for that notebook pictured above so that I can show you the completed chart, but it’s nowhere. It might be in my daughter’s room because it contains the handwritten portion of Hollow Wishes and she likes to read it…and if it’s in my daughter’s bedroom, we might never see that notebook again. If I ever find it, I’ll take a new picture of the chart and update this post. 🙂

If you’re a writer, do you track your progress? What’s your method?