Category Archives: Writing

Thoughts, tips and articles on writing.

How to come up with a novel idea

There are many, many ways people come up with ideas for their novel. Sometimes they grow organically. Sometimes inspiration strikes through a dream. And sometimes one has to help the process along. What I did this year was to think of ten to fifteen scenes from favorite books. How did each scene make me feel? […]

August 27, 2017 – 10:14 am | By NewMexicoKid | Posted in NaNoWriMo, Writing | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Prep workshop #4: Engaging your readers

First year co-Municipal Liaison Frank Dahlman gave a stirring and insight-filled preparatory workshop Saturday, 19 October at the Community Room of the Nichols Library in Naperville. After opening with a cute story about his daughter’s first soccer goal, Frank leapt into the importance of engaging our readers and began a tour of many ways we […]

October 22, 2013 – 6:19 pm | By NewMexicoKid | Posted in NaperWriMo, Writing | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Prep workshop #3: all about structure and plot

Roger Lubeck, Ph.D., author, editor and member of the Journey, gave an information-rich presentation on story structure and plot at the 95th Street Library in Naperville. Detailed notes are available from the workshop. Roger covered the well known novel story structures, different plot types, a discussion on handling point of view, advice on outlining, and […]

October 15, 2013 – 7:59 pm | By NewMexicoKid | Posted in NaperWriMo, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Katherine Lato shows how Characters are Story

Author Katherine Lato (aka KatherineWriting) led participants through her preparatory workshop Characters are story. This informative workshop delved into many aspects of characters: how to make them feel real to the reader, how to keep them interesting, how best to work them into scenes, how to handle their back story, etc. There were plenty of […]

October 5, 2013 – 9:04 pm | By NewMexicoKid | Posted in NaNoWriMo, NaperWriMo, Writing | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Notes from the Oct 20 writer’s self assessment workshop

Author and psychologist Roger Lubeck led a group of twenty four writers October 20th through a writer’s self-assessment workshop to prepare folks for National Novel Writing Month. Roger, who is the Editor of the upcoming Journey short story anthology The Day Before The End of the World (to be published October 31, 2012), is by […]

October 22, 2012 – 10:57 am | By NewMexicoKid | Posted in NaperWriMo, Writing | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Using kanbanpad (free) for novel planning?

Ever since I ran into and used the now-abandonware papel for a novel, I’ve been thinking of finding or writing a better novel planning tool. I really like the idea of using 3×5 index cards for this, but in a software tool. I’ve tried celtx and read about Scrivener but I would like a free […]

October 14, 2012 – 11:37 am | By NewMexicoKid | Posted in Writing | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Review your novel in Book format

I just saw create space has a new interior view feature. When you open a new title in create space, you upload a word doc or PDF, and view your novel in book format, page by page. Very helpful for later.

November 20, 2011 – 4:29 pm | By Roger Lubeck | Posted in NaNoWriMo, NaperWriMo, The Journey, Writing | Tagged | Comments (0)