For many people, September is the true start of the new year.
It makes sense when you think about it: summer holidays are over; both grade school and university classes are recommencing; the days are shorter; the weather is cooler.
Likes, Retweets, and Comments on Other Comments: Recapping the First #HFChitChat Live Chat
A chat is defined as “an informal conversation”. To engage in a chat is “to talk in a friendly, informal way”.
Chatting is equally applicable to friends and strangers, and is customarily performed in a relaxed and leisurely manner.
But almost all of this changes when it comes to a Twitter chat, and you are one of the chat hosts.
The Who, What, Why-the-Heck, Etc. of #HFChitChat
Me with Texas writer Sydney Young (L) and 2018 PitchWars mentor Carrie Callaghan (R) at the 2019 Historical Novel Society writers’ conference
So many creative initiatives begin life as an offhand comment, initially dismissed.
So it was with #HFChitChat—the idea of a recurring Twitter chat and online community for writers of historical fiction.
Thoughts on Reading Through the Rest of My Novel
It was a tweet I could have written myself:
The first half of this book keep growing in revisions, while the second half keeps… not…being revised.
Cut it in half and call it a duology? 😅
— E. K. Thiede (Emily) (@ethiedee) July 10, 2019
(At least the first part of the tweet; it’s pretty hard to create a duology out of a story that’s already been envisioned as a trilogy!)
What Worked for Me: A Round-up of Recommendations for Getting the Most Out of a Writers’ Conference
If I didn’t go now, I’d have to wait until 2021.
It was this—the inherent uncertainty of any long gap of time—that convinced me to go to the recent writers’ conference of the Historical Novel Society’s North American chapter, held June 20-23 in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
Writers’ conferences are expensive, even more so with the exchange from Canadian dollars for those held in the United States. Still, as a writer of historical fiction, I felt it was important for me to go.
At the Midpoint to the End of All Things 2019: My Second-Quarter 2019 Goals Check-In/Reassessment
For people with New Year’s Resolutions, the middle of the year is truly do or die time.
On the one hand, if you’ve yet to do any work toward your goals for the year, mid-year seems to represent the latest you could realistically start and still achieve the full desired result.
Recent Reads – January to March 2019
Five years ago, I wrote a post on how to read 12 books in a year.
Twelve books a year doesn’t trouble me anymore, but it did at the time. I found myself floundering beneath the burden of various competing obligations, some mandatory, some discretionary, and that reading, my oldest pastime, had fallen far by the wayside.
