As November draws to a close, so does the quest to win NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I put win in italics because the prize is primarily self-satisfaction or bragging rights. Many writers participate the month was designed to get people to put words on the page. Any words toward the goal of writing a novel. The basic premise is to take a blank sheet of paper (or digital variation thereof) and have a shiny bright new idea, and starting November 1st write 50,000 words (averaging 1,667 words a day) by the end of November 30th—a daunting, but theoretically achievable task.

HUGE SHOUT OUT TO ALL PARTICIPANTS THIS YEAR! I SALUTE YOU!!!

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In the past, I have enjoyed cheering on anyone participating in the event. I missed checking up on how people were doing against their goal this year and hearing the excitement as everyone discussed their ideas with such enthusiasm. On November 1st, surrounded by boxes everywhere, I gave a brief thought to those who were dashing off their first words followed by a pensive pang because I'd miss all the excitement. I knew I wouldn't participate this year because the cross-country move I made mid-November put paid to any hopes of completing the task. I'm not an active participant in NaNoWriMo in any year … the self-inflicted pressure of writing a certain number of words or falling short of a goal halts my writing process … but I do enjoy cheering everyone else on.

As a writer, I don't have a daily (or even weekly) word count goal—either when drafting or editing. It may drive my agent crazy, but my process simply doesn't function that way and setting those concrete goals can put the creative brakes on more than it will ever spur me to achieve the goal. So how do I finish anything? It's all about knowing who you are as a writer and being true to your process.

Depending on the book, my process can either be fast or slow or somewhere in between. It depends on the story, the complexity of the plot, and primarily the characters and how well they communicate the story to me. The book I'm editing for what feels like the 3,000th time, South of Happy (Katie McCabe, Book 2), I wrote in 3 weeks, but it took me nine or ten months to complete the first draft edits. While the words simply flowed out of me and I wrote on average 5,000 words a night and between 10k-15k on the weekend days, the resulting manuscript had the makings of a story, but technically it was a big lump of clay that I'd thrown at the wall. A lot of clean up work had to be done to shape it into the story it is today.

By contrast my current WIP (Work in Progress), The Secret of the Red Key (Homeless Myths, Book 1), is taking longer for me to write than any other book I've written. Why? In an odd way, it is taking longer because I have learned more about the craft of writing and am far more deliberate about what I'm doing as I put words on the page. But that also means there will be a lot less mess to clean up when I'm done.

When writing South of Happy, I only knew it was a sequel to the first book, Rain Falling on Embers, and since I had lived with the characters in my head for a while, I merely had to plug in my headphones and turn on my music and the words simply gushed. At that point, I had no idea the story would develop into a five book series.

With The Secret of the Red Key, I have known from almost the outset that it will be a five book series. I don't know the characters quite as well yet, and the plot of this one is far more complex than with the Katie McCabe series. I absolutely love what is going on the page, the characters who keep popping up while I'm in progress, and the direction for the series, but since I'm getting things in a piecemeal fashion instead of linear, it is going to take longer for me to write. But it will be worth the wait.

Congratulations to all who participated in NaNoWriMo 2023 and best wishes as you complete your novel and polish it 'til it shines.

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Have you ever read a book that made you feel like you were living the story along with the characters? A book that made you think about your own life and how you would handle the challenges they faced?

Novels are powerful. They help us understand ourselves and others better. Reading helps us cope with difficult emotions and situations, such as grief, bullying, and survival, which are common themes in middle grade and young adult books. They are also common experiences in many people's lives. If you haven’t faced some of these issues yourself, you probably know someone who has.

So how can reading novels or writing stories help us deal with these issues? And how can we use these issues to create our own stories? Here are some tips and ideas:

How Stories Help Us Deal with Strong Emotions and Situations

• We feel less alone. When we read about characters who are going through the same things as we are, we relate to them and feel like we have a friend who understands us. We learn from their experiences and see how they cope with their problems.
• Reading helps us process our emotions. When characters are feeling sad, angry, scared, or happy, we can empathize with them and feel those emotions too. This can help us release our own feelings and process them in a healthy way. We can also share the books we like to communicate our feelings to others.
• We find hope and inspiration. When characters overcome their difficulties and achieve their goals, we feel hopeful and motivated. We admire their courage, resilience, and creativity, and try to emulate them in our own lives. And sometimes we find ideas and solutions for our own problems.

How to Use Strong Emotions and Situations to Create Our Own Stories

• We use our own experiences as inspiration. If we have faced an issue in our own lives, we can use those memories as a starting point. We write about how we felt, what we did, and what we learned from those situations. We use our experiences as a springboard for the imagination by changing some details or adding fictional elements.
• We use our imagination to create new scenarios. If we have not faced a scenario the character in our story is facing in our own lives, we can still write about them by using our imagination. We can think of what-if questions, such as "What if I lost my best friend?" or "What if I was stranded on an island?" or "What if I was bullied at school?" We can then imagine how we would react and what would happen next.
• Research—research—research. Whether we use our own experiences or our imagination, research is essential to make our stories more authentic and accurate. Read books and articles about whatever situation has arisen in your story. Talk to people who have gone through those issues or are experts on them. Then use what you’ve learned to drop in a detail here or there which evokes emotions in those who read the story.

Writing novels or stories is challenging but rewarding. Rain Falling on Embers deals with the themes of grief, bullying, survival, and love, to name a few. A challenge to write, but I am so glad I did. It turned out to be a gripping and inspiring story that shows how Katie McCabe overcomes her challenges and grows as a person, finding hope and happiness in her new surroundings.

So next time you read a book, think about how it makes you feel and what you learn from it. And next time you write a story, think about how you can use your experiences, imagination, and research to make it engaging and meaningful.

Happy reading and writing!

This post is part of the Young Writers Series: for more tips, click here.

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In a world where we keep spinning at an ever faster pace, I am slow. And I'm okay with that … especially when it comes to writing.

There are writers who set word count goals to accomplish each day. For example, Stephen King has a goal of 2,000 words a day, and I laud those who can set goals and keep them. My process lends itself more to there being some days 200 words on the page might be a win, when another day might bring 5,000 words and I stop only because my hands cannot keep up. While I do outline prior to starting any work, once I'm actively writing something, I let the characters guide me.

I received the manuscript for South of Happy back from the editor a few weeks ago and have been working my way through the comments. (HUGE shoutout to Christopher Brooks!!!) My editing progress may be even more erratic than drafting progress. A good editor (and Christopher is excellent) challenges the author to stretch and points out things they have been blind to, no matter how many times they have revised the manuscript.

South of Happy edits are no exception to the rule—which means some sections I can breeze through, but others stop me in my tracks and I need to think things through. I enjoy the introspective deep dives that happen during this editing pass because the result is a much richer result for the reader.

I'm like the turtle, slowly moving through and stopping occasionally to take in the scenery. Sometimes, the editorial notes are about one thing, and I have an epiphany about something else. Case in point (and the inspiration for this blog post):

The editorial notes had to do with a scene where two characters are walking along a road and then move into the woods lining the road. The comments were about clarifying the setting details. But while focused on the setting, a question arose. WHY were they walking? In the normal course of events, neither character would have walked to school, so why were they walking home?

Then I wondered whether Agatha Christie had a similar moment, and whether a single question had spawned an entire novel in, Why Didn't They Ask Evans? The single question stopped me in my editing tracks and it led to several other questions I needed to answer.

The amazing thing is that I had all the elements to hand in the story not only to answer the question, but to help me provide better context and a lusher experience for the reader.

If I had been pushing myself to race through the edits with the primary goal of simply getting through them, I'd have missed the lack of motivation on the page. Yes, there are times I may despair that I'll ever finish, so want to blast through to the end, but something usually crops up to make me extremely glad I took the extra time.

Photo by Jose Aragones

No one who has read the manuscript to date, not even my editor, raised the question or noticed the lack, but I'm so glad it caught my attention—this time. I take a great deal of pride in polishing up a manuscript until it shines and love the occasions when something jumps out at me, even if it takes revising multiple sections of the work to get it right. So I'll continue turtling along in the slow lane, and when I get to the finish line, I'll have an even greater sense of fulfillment knowing I did my best.

One additional bit of information … the title for the book has changed from Winds Blowing South of Happy to South of Happy because South of Happy simply suited it better and I am even happier with the title than I was before. Hopefully, we'll have a cover soon.

The picture at the top is a visual for my editing process … coming out of the dark into the light, but up ahead is the unknown.

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Getting to know my characters is like getting to know a friend and I need to know not only those things the character will tell me, but maybe even more importantly, those things they won’t say. Because it is the things we don’t talk about easily which are the deepest well of emotion. And the depth is where you find the uniqueness of the character.

So why is it important to know your characters … especially those traits beyond what you can “see”? Because the better you know your character, the better able you are to put them on the page as a real person. Here is an example of what a difference it makes:

When I started writing Speak No Evil, I knew there would be a character in the role of social worker because the main character winds up in foster care after the death of her mother and disappearance of her father. But I didn’t know anything about her/him — the character was like a stick figure to me with no features whatsoever. I honestly thought the social worker would play a minor role in the overall book. The “minor role” wound up blossoming into one of the major support characters for Melody. When it came time to write the first scene with the social worker, I didn’t even have a name … though by that time I knew the character was a woman. So I stopped writing and took the time to get to know Rebecca Prescott.

At that point, I still thought she was a minor character in the book, but over the next few scenes, she proved me wrong. As I wrote, details of her personality and past unfolded, which is fairly normal for first draft character development. I finished the draft and took the work through several revisions, honing and tightening. But I realized there was a gap at the beginning that needed to be shored up. I needed a transitionary chapter to go between chapter one and chapter two. So after the completion of the book and a couple of years, I wrote the “last” chapter to go toward the beginning of the book. The writing went smoothly and only required a little “touch up” here and there because I knew my characters so well at that point.

Then, during the publisher editing process, one of the editors determined that the second chapter should become the first as it set the book up in a much better fashion. He was right. It’s something I would never have seen because I am way too close to the book (and which is why editors are essential.) I could have given a hundred reasons why the chapter should remain exactly where it was in the 2-spot. But I took a step back and looked at his comments from a more objective perspective and his one reason trumped all my reasons combined — the strength of my characters were there on the page and provided the hook necessary to draw readers in.

The editor in question is Jonas Saul, the international bestselling author of the Sarah Roberts Series, which has sold well over 2 million copies. So here is a tip from Jonas:

Think of it like this: you’re writing about a kitchen. Everyone knows basically what a kitchen looks like, so we as authors shouldn’t bore them with kitchen details like, stove, fridge, counters, and so on. Tell them about the cockroach on the counter, though. Show them the kitchen’s age with that cockroach, or the state of cleanliness of the kitchen. It’s my, “Cockroach on the Counter” rule.

Then he followed it with a specific comment about a line of text in the chapter:

The, “You haven’t said a word for almost two years. Not even in therapy,” was awesome. There’s the cockroach on the counter, your originality, your yank-me-in moment. Love it!

If I had written that particular chapter first, it probably would have been a very different chapter … because I wouldn’t have known my characters as well as I did at that point. Rebecca Prescott said the words that ultimately set up the entire novel, and they may not have been said at all, had I not known the character well. In fact, no other character in the entire book would have KNOWN enough about Melody to say those words.

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You’ve done it. You conceived of a story idea, sat down and wrote ALL the words and finally reached the point where you typed The End. You’re exhilirated. The world will gasp and hold its sides at how perfect your story is. It is, without a doubt, a work of art … sheer poetry in prose form.

I’ll be honest … I feel like I’ve just run a race when I reach the end of the first draft of any novel I’ve written and like I should be taking a victory lap. It is a HUGE accomplishment, and one we can all be proud of. Except the completion of the first draft is equivalent to reaching the starter’s line for the race, not the end. The first thing I do on completion of a first draft is put it away and go on to the million-and-one other things I have to do, whether it be starting a new project or polishing up an old one. I need fresh eyes before I go back and look at the masterpiece I have just penned … because I need to be able to see the mistakes. And they are there, I can promise you that.

Let’s say you’ve finished up the story, read through it again, confirmed your own conviction that it is wonderful and you send it off to be read by someone else. Someone who has a critical eye, because that’s what your story needs, someone to find those things that aren’t quite right to help you make sure it is the best story it can possibly be.

Then your story — your perfect little story — comes back and looks as if Jack the Ripper and the Warwick Slasher were having a contest to see who could rip it up the most. It is bleeding with red ink and your feelings go from confidence to failure in two short seconds. Thoughts start chasing each other in your mind. How could it be so bad??? Why did I think I could write in the first place?? Maybe I should give up? You have failed to achieve the effect with your story that you wanted. It’s OKAY. Failure is embedded in the fabric of success. No one achieves perfection the first time out. And in writing, I daresay no one achieves perfection. So let’s change how we view failure.

It has become popular to make fun of people’s failures … in fact, there are memes (Nailed It!) dedicated to mocking failed attempts. And yes, the attempt failed, but at least they tried. Something the mockers didn’t do. And here is the thing about failure, it is only the end result if you give up on trying to achieve your goal. You failed … so what? What did you learn this time to make the next attempt better? Because every mark on that story represents an opportunity to learn and improve your craft.

I am always extremely thankful for all of the red marks. Someone else has taken the time to help me see things I was blind to to help me make my story the best it can be. Does that red mark represent a failure? You bet, but it also represents something that can be fixed now that I am aware there is a problem. I really like the acronym for FAIL — First Attempt In Learning.

Instead of feeling down because we have not achieved perfection, we should relish the things we have learned through trying and failing. Does it mean we have more work to do? You bet. But nothing makes me happier than making my story better and stronger. Success is built on the back of failure — when we choose to learn from those failures.

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You’re all set … you’ve got the right notebook and right pen, or your computer screen is ready and the cursor is blinking at you from the page. You settle in take a deep breath — and you’ve got nothing. Not a single thought of where the story is going. Not a single word to scribble or type. Nada. Bubkis. The clean white page or blinking cursor is mocking you. How can this be when you were so ready to write?

I’m not a big fan of the term writer’s block because the word block tends to make me feel like the problem is insurmountable. And if I walk around telling myself I’m completely blocked … I will be. The situation will only get worse. Because tomorrow, you’re not going to be as eager to write because you have the word BLOCK stuck in your head. The day after that will be even harder until so much time has passed and you’re afraid to even face the blank page. So the question becomes how to avoid the big, bad block.

Every writer I have ever known has faced at least a few bad moments where the words are hard to find, and there are posts all over the internet about how to get around the block. But how do you know which method is going to be most effective? How can you keep trying if you keep failing to get words on the page? For me, it all boils down to one little word … Why?

When the words dry up and I am staring at the page, rather than get frustrated, I start looking for the reason. There is always a reason. And once I figure out the reason, the writing resumes. People have different ways of dealing with the words drying up and that will be the topic for another post. The method most effective for me is to walk away from the screen, put my headphones on, and go for a walk. While I’m on the walk, I don’t furiously think about the book I’m writing or actively try to figure out the issue — I put the brain on autopilot and listen. My brain is much smarter than I am, and if I give it a chance, it always gives me the reason.

Here are some of the reasons the words can dry up:

1. Not knowing the characters well enough. If I don’t know the characters well, then how can I possibly tell their story with any conviction?
2. Not knowing where the story is going. You can know your characters well, but if you don’t know what they are doing next, you might need to take a break and let them tell you.
3. Not listening to your characters. This may depend on the type of writer you are. In my writing, the characters drive the story forward. So when I know my characters and know where we’re going, sometimes I get on a roll writing, and stop listening to them … until we come to a screeching halt. Once I listen I learn I didn’t have the full story.
4. Impostor Syndrome. Show me a writer, and I’ll show you someone who has had at least a few moments of doubt along their journey. So many don’t feel like a real writer because of X, Y, or Z. It’s hard to keep moving forward when you feel like a fake. If this is the reason, then you have to remind yourself that the act of putting words on the page means you ARE a writer. Good, bad, or indifferent … you are writing, so therefore a writer. Bad or indifferent writing can be edited — a blank page cannot be.
5. Fear. This comes in many forms. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of people hating your work. Fear of not realizing you are terrible. Fear of putting yourself out there for the public to criticize. If you never finish, you never have to face these fears.

Once you understand the reason you have stopped writing, you can take action to overcome whatever the issue is, and once you do that, the words will flow again.

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You’ve just had a fabulous idea for a story and your brain is bursting with all the details and you cannot wait to write it. You sit down at the keyboard and pull up a page, or grab a notepad if you draft long hand, and the blank page mocks you with its emptiness. The only thing on your mind is a huge question: Where do you START? The sizzling in your brain fades and you think maybe the idea wasn’t so great after all if you don’t know how to get started.

STOP!

You’re trying to run the race before you’ve put your feet on the ground. Before your story can have legs, you need to know more about it. You need an outline. (I feel like there should be a musical tag here of dun-dun-DUN!!!) Before you freak out and start protesting that you can’t outline because it robs you of your creativity, or that you’re a panster and if you try to figure out your story beforehand, it becomes stilted and flat, I’m saying outline in the loosest sense of the word. An outline is not always a document with Roman Numerals listing all the scenes in the book. If I had to do that, I’d be rocking in the corner whimpering at the thought and I’d never get the outline written, let alone the book. Because when I write a book, I don’t know all the scenes that will end up in the book before I start. Part of the magic of writing is allowing your characters to develop and letting them lead the way.

Outlining could be developing your story structure which is figuring out your major plot points and when they occur throughout the story. Mystery writers might be more focused on this type of development prior to starting so they don’t wind up in a muddle half way through. There are some well known methods like Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! which was developed more for screenwriting, but the use of beat sheets has been adopted by several novelists as well. Or you can try Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method which starts with a single overarching idea, the idea for the story summed up in a single sentence, and builds from there.

I have a friend who usually starts with the Snowflake Method, but when I attempt it, the only thing that happens is brain frostbite. So what happens if you don’t work well with a more formalized method of outlining? Start with what got you excited to begin with. Write down your idea. That’s always a good place to start because you might not remember it clearly later. Fill in as much detail as you can because I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone back to my outline and realized I had forgotten something. Once you have the story idea down, what next?

Play 20 Questions. Not really, but think of all the questions you need to answer and jot them down. Who is the main character? What makes them tick? What is their biggest obstacle in the story? How do they overcome it? Or DO they overcome it? Where does the story take place? What place in time does the story take place? What is the character’s main motivation? Who or what is the antagonist? How does the conflict escalate? What I’m really telling you to do is brainstorm. Once you’ve answered all the questions you can think of to start with, you’ll have a much better idea of where to start your story, what type of research you need to do before beginning to write, and where you want to end up when you’re done.

Whichever method you choose, the next time you face the blank page, it will invite you to start writing.

The start image at the top of the post is: © Lina0486 | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

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“Ideas can come from anywhere and at any time. The problem with making mental notes is that the ink fades very rapidly.” – Rolf Smith

The bane of the writer’s existence is the idea that arrives at an inconvenient time. I don’t think I’ve ever had a story show up while I’m sitting in front of my keyboard, hands poised over the keys, ready to dash down the idea as it forms. Ideas show up in the middle of the night as dreams, or wake you from a sound sleep with a mind blast of a brilliant idea you’re CERTAIN you’ll remember in the morning. Then morning comes and you struggle to clear the fog away to remember the unforgettable. Ideas come while driving, walking, taking a shower, in the middle of a conversation, on a bike ride. They come from all places: dreams, the lyrics of a song, a two-second sound byte of a news story, a newspaper headline, an article on the internet, an overheard snippet of conversation, and completely out of the blue as if by lightning strike.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single writer I know state they are going to go sit in front of their computer and come up with a brilliant idea to write about. Invariably, the idea has come and we are itching to get to a keyboard and get it down. BUT what happens when you’re brain is a magnet that collects more ideas than you can write at the moment? How do you capture the idea, especially the one flitting through the night? Most writers I know have a list of story ideas they work from. And once they get started on one from their list, invariably a shiny new idea makes its presence known.

Some keep a notepad and pen on their nightstand to capture those middle of the night revelations and travel everywhere with a notebook or journal for capturing the ideas as they arrive. A friend of mine uses a recording device in the same way. Because thoughts can be elusive. My method is this: survival of the fittest … up to a point. If I have a dream or an idea wakes me in the middle of the night, I don’t jot it down. I wait until morning and if the idea is truly one meant to be captured, I’ll remember, or it will come back. Because my stories that are waiting to be written can be pests. They don’t leave me alone until they have been properly documented and saved in a file.

I used to document the ideas in a word document, jotting down as much of the story as I got at the moment, and adding to the document as more thoughts for the story arrived. I have since modified to using OneNote because I can post a segment of an article from the internet and the URL of the article is automatically captured, or if I explain my idea to anyone, or something develops during an email conversation, when I copy and paste the pertinent bit into the document, it links to the email exchange — which can come in handy. I can also save pictures for character representation and have multiple pages to document things like setting, character background, etc. so organization is much cleaner.

Once I document what I need to, I close the file and go back to what I’m working on. Sometimes it takes years before I get around to the story, but in the meantime, as ideas occur related to the story, I have a place to keep them so I don’t forget. My brain happens to be one of those idea magnets, so my list is always huge, but when I’m ready to work on something new, I never lack for something to write about. How do you capture your ideas?

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Previously, I spoke about being a plotter or a pantster and how I fall in the middle of the spectrum. I’d like to add that for me, every book is different. Some require much more detailed planning in advance of starting, others simply have to be written and forget the outline you dashed down because we’re going on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride with this one.

I am very much a character-driven writer, so no matter whether well-plotted out or using the sketchiest outline possible, I need to know my characters well. They need to become real people to me. I imagine different scenarios, outside the story line, to see how they will react. I have imaginary conversations with my characters to get a sense of who they are and what their opinions and attitudes are.

Not all authors have to know their characters like I do, but for me, if my characters are not real people to me, I can’t write the story. So before I put one word on the page, I will spend a lot of time staring at the screen, the ceiling, off into space … listening for my characters to speak. One method that usually works for me is putting in headphones and going for a walk. Or going for a long drive. Until I know WHO I’m working with, I don’t have their story.

Writing the story is just the beginning. Once you get the story down on paper (or on a computer file), you then go back and re-read and revise. You are looking for mistakes (like missing words) as well as changing some of the story. EVERY writer makes changes to their work because they always find something that they want to change, something that will make it better. No one starts with a story that doesn’t need changes. It doesn’t matter how many times I review a story, I will always see something I want to change, so for me the hard part is determining when the story is polished.

One writing teacher I had stated the ability to write a story was the ability to keep your behind in the chair long enough. Inspiration of what to write is the wonderful part because your brain is bubbling with ideas and they take hold and haunt you until you put them down on paper. Then comes the work of staying in a chair long enough to get the whole story down — and to review it more times than you can count.

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I’d like to share with you a little about the writing process. Of course, I can’t tell you how all authors write, but I can share my process as well as those of some authors I know.

There is a popular theory that if you had a room of monkeys typing on a keyboard and infinite amount of time, they would be able to replicate all of the great works of fiction or indeed any book ever written. It is called the infinite monkey theorem—and the idea has always tickled me because I cannot conceive of a roomful of well-behaved monkeys sitting for as long as it would take to create the complete works of Shakespeare. Jesse Anderson created a fun visualization of what it would take for the monkeys to recreate Shakespeare … hover the cursor over the text and the box on the right shows how many attempts it would take to create the highlighted phrase. And at the bottom of this post I have included a computer simulation of how those random phrases might occur. So I guess my biggest problem is not having enough monkeys to do the writing for me.

Another theory is that to write a story, you start at the beginning, keep writing until you reach the end and then stop. This sounds easy, but when you start to put the words down all sorts of questions start cropping up. What is the beginning? How will I know when to end? How do I get from the beginning to the end? Getting started is tough when looking at the blank page, but sometimes knowing when the story is done is even harder. YIKES!!

Some authors create a very detailed outline of their story before they start to write it. They need to know every plot point before they can start writing the story. Once they have all of the details mapped out, they put the words on the page and the characters in the story follow the map. They are called plotters.

Some authors don’t know where the writing is going to take them, they don’t map out their story line first, but just start with a concept (a setting, a character, an event) and see where it takes them. They approach writing with a “let’s see what happens next” attitude. They are called pansters.

I actually fit in between the two. I need to know the basics of my story, but as I write, there are twists that happen that I didn’t know were going to happen. It’s almost like the story takes on a life of its own and the characters go in directions that I didn’t know they were going to go in, but eventually, they meet me back at the story line that I started with. It’s fun when your characters start taking on a life of their own, because at that point, they start writing the story for you. Maybe I do have monkeys in a room somewhere. Or maybe I’m the monkey.

Another thing to keep in mind, is how you approach the story may depend on the story itself. Some take more planning and others need to be left more to where the characters take you. Where do YOU fall on the spectrum? What is your writing comfort zone?

The post YWS: How Writers Write – Take 1 appeared first on Be the Cat.

I am very excited to share my completely redesigned main website, lkgriffie.com. Several months ago, my site was viciously attacked by bots who spammed the internet with links for shoes and handbags and who knows what else. Shortly thereafter, it was under siege by the internet again, only this time by robo-programs from all over the world trying to login and cause more disruption. When it hit the point where I’d finish up a full work day and come home and spend most of my night blocking IP addresses from access, I decided it was time to shut things down for a while. And I’ve been so tied up with other tasks that I haven’t had the opportunity to get the site back up and running.

Many thanks to my friend, M. Patrick Duggan, for lending a hand and getting the base site setup and giving me a framework in which to play. Since I have more ideas than I have time to execute, there are still more items to come, but I wanted to show off the new look. I am just happy to have a full site and not just a single page stating “Under Construction”.

I am also looking forward to sharing news on the writing front soon. While things have been quiet on the blog, I’ve been working diligently on several projects I will be talking about in the near future. Until then, hop on over to lkgriffie.com and check things out.

The post Refreshing the Site appeared first on Be the Cat.

I was already in the process of reorganizing my site as I will be writing under two different names — one for children and Middle Grade (LK Griffie), and the other for Young Adult (Liana Gardner) and through discussion with my agent, Italia Gandolfo, we felt it best to have the children’s and the YA segregated as they are very different types of books. I had also already contracted with a web designer to redesign my primary site, but first I had some clean up to do. Unfortunately, the spammy links got indexed and I’ve been working on cleaning up those indexes so they are not still accessible doing damage. At the same time, since I wasn’t sure whether the hackers got in through the theme or one of the many plugins I used on the site, I stripped everything out and left a one page site running two plugins … Security and the WordPress jetpack with most everything turned off.

One page with a graphic stating the site is under construction and I figured hackers would find it uninteresting (there really isn’t anything to mess up, there is no data left hanging out, not that it would be of interest to a hacker anyway). Yesterday I was proven wrong. I had hack attempts trying to login with the user ID admin from IP addresses all over the world every few seconds for over a 24-hour period. It was astounding to watch the live traffic as it hit, attempt after attempt all trying to access the site login. I got tired of blocking individual IP addresses and finally wound up blocking entire countries … I had to do something while the siege was going on. I couldn’t keep up.

I will ultimately relax the security on my site again, once the hackers decide that they aren’t going to get what they want with my site and they move on to the next one. But the experience underscored a few things for me:

• Creating an administrative user ID that is not admin or administrator for your website is essential.
• And once you have, removing the admin/administrator user is just as essential.
• As fussy and fiddly as they are, having the protection of a strong password can save your site from being completely hijacked. Something like: 9]t.F`fY}TT~NuNA Or like: :=9%2.LvqXA@~QZ* will keep hackers guessing … because it isn’t your dog’s name, or your mom’s, or best friend, or … you get the idea. Things that people can guess from knowing you.

So until the new site is completed … which should be any day now …

PS — for those who’d like to know … the binary code in the picture says, “get lost hackers”

The post Hackers Not Welcome Here appeared first on Be the Cat.