1 Trick I’ve Used to Write 5 Novels Okay, so I’ve reached a stopping point after that first rush of 100 pages. I just can’t seem to keep writing. But I have no idea what’s wrong with the book, and I certainly can’t figure out how to fix it. Maybe…

1 Trick I’ve Used To Write 5 Novels The first 100 pages of a book, once I figured out what it’s going to be, are usually a delicious time of writing. …

1 Trick I’ve Used To Write 5 Novels My job as a novelist requires a lot of administrative work. But it also requires me… to write novels. So when I have a limited amount of time, or I have to choose between one or the other, I choose… writing a…

1 Trick I’ve Used to Write 5 Novels — When I have an idea for a book, other books, that tell a story in a similar way to what I’m envisioning for my own, come to mind. Maybe it’s a voice I want to emulate. Maybe I want to study how time moves in another book. To someone else…

1 Trick I’ve Used to write 5 Novels — As a parent who writes from home, it can be hard to find the mental and physical space to write a book. So when my husband took our kids to visit family for for three days, I decided to make myself my own writing retreat — at our house. My…

1 Trick I’ve Used To Write 5 Novels Writers dream of having their books made into films. But why wait for Hollywood? When I wrote my psychological thriller Fierce Little Thing, about a group of kids raised in a cult, I cast the main characters (in my mind, at least)…

1 Trick I’ve Used To Write 5 Novels — When I’m writing a book, a playlist connects me to my characters and my story. I build this playlist by adding songs I come into contact with that correlate to any aspect of the project, as I move from imagining that fictional world to actually writing it. A few examples: …

Brilliant books about cults, teens, and rebel girls — When I was writing my fifth novel, Fierce Little Thing, the word “elemental” kept rising to the surface. Thematically, I’ve always been interested in legacy, family, and secrets (see, especially, my third novel, Bittersweet)— and this new book — about a group of kids raised on a cult, and the…

I’m using Inktober prompts to generate daily writing I’m always jealous of my visual artist friends, especially my sister, when Inktober rolls around. Then this year I realized that even though I don’t draw, I do write, and it might be fun to take the same prompts and see what…