There’s No Such Thing as a Writing Birthday (and how I celebrated mine)

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Janna G. Noelle

The morning began as most as winter workdays do, which is to say dark, and because of that, what felt far too early to me.

This year, I made a conscious effort to remember my writing birthday – to commemorate it on the actual day, or if nothing else, to at least make note of it. February 12: in truth, an arbitrarily-chosen day meant to mark the start of my first (incomplete, shelved) novel as approximated through a forensic accounting some emails I sent to a friend around that time.

I’m an Aquarius writer.

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Thoughts on Nearing the End

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Janna G. Noelle

I should qualify this by saying I mean the end of my novel.

(Were I talking the end of my life, my thoughts would be considerably different, and if nothing else, I’d perhaps be referring back to this post about my bucket list.)

Ending a novel is hard. The fact that I’ve done it twice thus far in my writing career hasn’t made it any easier. Perhaps this is because only once did I consciously do so since my “two-book” series-in-progress grew to three books initially without my realizing it.

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It’s the Silence That Keeps Me Awake

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Janna G. Noelle

What keeps you up at night?

For some reason, I have a disproportionately large number of friends who are insomniacs.

I’m not talking people who occasionally suffer bouts of sleeplessness like we all sometimes do. Rather, I mean folk who chronically don’t sleep more than a few of hours, every night of their lives.

That must really suck.

The notion of insomnia really came to the fore of my mind due to my recent trip to Australia. From my connection at Los Angeles airport to Melbourne, Australia, the flight was about 15 hours long.

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I Never Miss a Deadline … Except When I Do (which is often)

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Janna G. Noelle

So, my WIP, such as it is, is indeed still IP.

To date, despite have been writing seriously for some six years, I’ve yet to complete anything novel-length that stands as a fully completed story – a fact that haunts me continuously.

I’d originally resolved to finish my WIP last year by my birthday, which is at the end of November.

I didn’t make that deadline, but consoled myself with the fact that I had an entire other novel to write to finish the story, my previously anticipated duology in fact being a trilogy.

But there’s still something about deadlines – something definitive and binding, which I suppose is the whole point. I almost never set deadlines. I really don’t like them, even though my “type” is supposed to thrive on them.

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Are Characters Born or Made? (The “Meet My Character” Blog Tour)

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Janna G. Noelle

Most writers, I’m sure, have heard tell of characters who seemingly develop “minds of their own” and “take over” the stories they’re part of.

Maybe it’s happened to you.

Whether or not this phenomenon even truly exists was the subject of the second-most contentious discussion my writing group has ever had.

(The most contentious, unsurprisingly, concerned plotting vs. pantsing. But that’s a story for another day.)

One writer from my group absolutely believed that characters can come to life, and that them doing so is a quasi-spiritual experience for the writer – a channeling of the divine, uncontrollable inspiration that exists all around us.

A writing of the story through us rather than by us.

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Who Anchors Your Artistic Chain of Influence?

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Janna G. Noelle

As writers, we often believe we were born to write.

I certainly have early memories of my writing life. My first “novel” – a masterpiece inspired by the cartoon Jem and the Holograms – was “published” in grade three. I haven’t really stopped writing since.

“It’s in my blood,” I’ve heard writers claim. “I couldn’t not do it.” And I find, for the most part, that I agree.

However, I’ve never been one to champion Nature as the sole determinant of anything. Especially after reading a recent blog post by literary marketing expert Dan Blank about an artist’s chain of influence, which led me to examine my own early writing influences.

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Do I Need a Bucket List? Do You?

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Janna G. Noelle

Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List (2007).

A fellow writer friend once told me:

“When I finish and publish my novel [a long-standing project of hers that’s faced many setbacks along the way], my life will be complete.”

“You mean, that portion of your life will be complete,” I clarified.

“No,” she persisted, “I mean I’ll have achieved my life’s greatest goal.”

“Until you come up with the next great goal, that is, right?”

My friend, after all, is only 37 – a bit early to peak in life, if you ask me.

For many writers, the writing and publishing of a novel – whether traditionally or via self-publishing – can take years: years spent finding the time, finding the motivation, finding one’s voice and message, and, of course, finding the skill to effectively convey it all.

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Replaying Xena: Reflections on my favourite fictional character

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Janna G. Noelle

Xena of Amphipolis, aka the Warrior Princess, is indeed my favourite fictional character.

(For the record, her character wasn’t actually a princess, which I like better now that I’m well past the age of 5 and its pervasive draw to all things “princess”.)

The show Xena Warrior Princess aired while I was in high school and university, from 1995-2001.

I’m not sure how it was I came to discover it or its two companion shows, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and The Adventures of Sinbad, but all three quickly became part of my Saturday afternoon routine. Xena was always my favourite.

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Bringing Up the Bodies: On resurrecting dead manuscripts

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Janna G. Noelle

Every writer who’s been writing for a while has a dead manuscript stuffed away somewhere.

Be it a bottom drawer, bottom shelf, back of a closet, or in digital form in some dark oubliette on one’s hard drive, it’s something of a rite of passage for a writer to discover his/her novel (usually the first one) is an irredeemable mess, and for him/her to give it the axe.

But how many of those whacked novels refuse to go quietly into that good night? How many writers end up haunted by the ghost of what could have been – what still can be now that they’re stronger wordsmiths who have loved, lost, and learned the error of their once novice ways?

And for those who have had this experience, how many actually give into it and take another crack, as it were, at the title?

I’m seriously considering doing just that.

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The Emails I Send to Myself (I can’t be the only writer who does this)

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Janna G. Noelle

I made a point some time ago to inform the IT manager at my workplace that I’m writing a novel.

Partly I did this because I’ve struck up a friendship with her over the years, and the fact eventually became a relevant addendum to her revelation of being an avid reader.

The other reason, though – perhaps the more pressing reason – is due to the nature of some of the emails I send.

Not that they’re offensive, or in any direct violation of the company’s Information Services & Technology user policy. But they are … strange, not the least of which is because they are emails send to myself at my personal email address.

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