April Davila - Author
I mentioned in my last post that I am heading into a final round of edits on my novel. This is draft seventeen, I think. I've kind of lost count because I saved a few versions at major decision points, leaving a couple of draft incomplete, but this I … [Continue reading] about Planning to Send Agents My Best Work
(And Only My Best Work)
Writers don't often talk about how many pages of their writing they throw away. I don't think anyone is trying to be secretive about it, but the truth is that by the time a book is published, nobody is thinking about all the writing that didn't make … [Continue reading] about Be Prepared to Throw Pages Away
(Lots of Pages)
If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw that I recently turned 40. I wasn't going to have a party, I really wasn't. But my sister insisted. She told me she would plan the whole thing and just asked where I wanted to go. I said Joshua Tree, … [Continue reading] about A Joshua Tree Birthday for Me
Last month, at the Pasadena Festival of Women Authors, Vendela Vida made an off-hand comment about her titles. She was talking about her first novel, "And Now You Can Go," and she said she regretted how nondescript it was. She said that when people … [Continue reading] about A Few Thoughts on Better Book Titles
I got a rough rejection last week. In truth, it was just a rejection, empirically not any better or worse than the dozens of others I've gotten so far this year. In fact, it was actually a pretty nice rejection, informing me that I had made the … [Continue reading] about What Success Looks Like
I've been on this kick about story structure lately. It seems the more I write, the more things occur to me and a topic I thought would be hard to tackle is actually turning out to be kind of fun to explore. So today I wanted to share a kind of silly … [Continue reading] about Oh S**t, Oh Cool or How to Keep a Story Interesting
Recently, and on two separate occasions, writer friends of mine have asked me the same question: I've been writing and writing, now how do I turn these pages into a story? If you find yourself with pages and pages of writing, and you're not sure … [Continue reading] about 3 Ways to Structure Your Pages Into a Story