Writing Tips

Nov 62 min read

Do you want to write?

November is traditionally a month where people aspire to finish a novel in a month. If you are one of those people, I have some great writing resources to share with you. Plus I want to give you the schedule of Vin's Discord Writing Sprints for November so you can work on your writing project as part of the Champion Community!

Writing/Author Resources

Author Resources Page on My Website

This page received a major glow up earlier this year when I got a new website and it now includes a ton of information that was previously scattered to the four winds including:

My Author Resource Guide
Interviews I've done in the past
My Blog Posts on Writing (including some that weren't categorized correctly so no one could find them until now!)

My Pinterest Board for Writing Tips

This Pinterest board has links to my blog posts on writing as well as many other writing related blog posts (or YouTube videos) from other authors, cool fantasy map ideas, and other resources you might find helpful for writing projects.

BONUS: On my YouTube channel I have a playlist with the videos that are writing related (example: tropes I love).

Discord Community Writing Sprints

Thanks to our Discord Community Manager Vin, you can join with other Champions to have fun while you are writing!

Vin hosts weekly writing sprints on Discord, and please consider this your official invitation to join the group! The dates and times of Vin’s writing sprints are listed below, and they’ll be held in the “Writing Sprints” channel of our server.

See this link for instructions on how to sign up for our community Discord if you haven't already.

You don’t have to work on a writing project if you want to join Vin’s sprints! If you are finishing homework, studying, or have a work project you really need to focus on please feel free to join. We would love to have you!

2024 Writing Sprint Schedule:

Wednesdays (6th, 13th, 20th, 27th) at 2pm Central
Thursdays (7th, 14th, 21st) at 8pm Central
- The sprint scheduled for Thanksgiving will be moved to Tuesday (26th) at 8pm Central

Jul 252 min read

SheaCon 2024: Wrap Up

SheaCon 2024 was last weekend and it's time to share the panel audio recordings!

But first I want to give a big thank you to all the Champions for attending, and for being such an amazing group! All of the panels and activities had great participation. It was so much fun to hang out with, laugh, and celebrate books with everyone, which is what the goal for Sheacon has always been.

Every year I also thank the Sheacon Planners–without them none of this would have happened, and they not only started organizing everything months ago they also have worked hard to make Sheacon smoother/more professional every year. Additionally, they acted as hosts for panels/events/games during Sheacon! They bravely kept up the conversation while running panels, organizing the group games, running the Retha and Dragons (or FATE) sessions, showing us all elf dancer stretches, and more.

Thank you so much to Akira, Anneli, Amanda, Ayrin, Batattack, Bluefires, Chelsea, Cheybri, Cindy, Cwang, Eleniel, Ellie, Emarynn, FrogPrincess994, Gwen, Jordan, Kamashida, Kimberly, LouBerry, Miriel, Prolly, QoP, Rachel, RayJay, RoseTen, Vin, and Zooknar. You guys are the best!

This is also the perfect chance to thank and salute our Chief Sheacon Planner, Cindy. Cindy puts in serious hours organizing the conference–the scheduling she has to figure out months in advance is intense! She’s pretty much a professional chaos wrangler, and I’m so grateful for her.

Finally, I want to thank our Director of Discord, Vin, and the Mod Squad– Smasher, Batattack, Cimorrene, and Rog–for helping all the new members in our discord server who joined so they could attend Sheacon, and our Facebook Mods–Megen, Sarah, and Jocelyn–who kept our community Facebook Group informed in the lead up to Sheacon!

Also, a big thank you to Melanie Cellier, Deborah Grace White, Shari L Tapscott, and Brittany Fichter who were our guest authors this year with a special call out to author Kimberly Rogers who hosted our relationship analysis panel.

Panel Recordings

Finally, for those of you who missed out on attending in person there are audio recordings of all the main panels! Our diligent Sheacon Planners recorded these so you can listen to them at your leisure! (If you enjoyed these recordings, please leave a quick comment thanking the Sheacon Planners!)

Nov 6, 20232 min read

NaNoWriMo 2023

Updated: Jun 19

November is here which means means NaNoWriMo–or National Novel Writing Month–has begun!

I’m so excited that this year (for the first time in years) I will actually be writing a book during November so I get to participate! (Sort of…I’m frantically plotting and editing right now, but hopefully I’ll begin writing in a few days!)

But first, what is NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month is an event started in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days (the month of November). The global event is run by the official NaNoWriMo nonprofit organization–which means it is also FREE to sign up and join in the fun. If you signup you get a nifty tracker and some fun discounts if you “win” and write 50,000 words by the end of November.

Even though NaNoWriMo focuses on writing a 50,000 word novel, you can work on any project you want! In the past, some participants work on D&D campaigns, journaling, school papers, or writing/planning out a comic book, so you can put your own unique spin on the month!

If you decide to join me and embark on the wonderful journey of writing a novel in a month I have some resources to share with you to help you!

Author Resources webpage
Blog Posts with the Writing Tips category
My Pinterest Board for Writing Tips (this Pinterest board has links to my blog post and other writing tips from other authors)

And thanks to our Discord Community Manager Vin, you don’t have to officially sign up for NaNoWriMo to join in on have fun!

Vin is going to be hosting writing sprints multiple times a week throughout the month of November on Discord (See link for instructions on how to sign up for our community Discord if you haven’t already) The dates and times of Vin’s writing sprints are listed below, and they’ll be held in the “Writing Sprints” channel of our server.

You don’t have to work on a fun writing project if you want to join in Vin’s sprints! If you are finishing homework, studying, or have a work project you really need to focus on please feel free to join. I will try to pop in for a couple of of Vin’s sprints throughout the month so I hope to see you there!

2023 NaNoWriMo Writing Sprint Schedule Monday, Wednesday, and Friday sprints will be at 2:00 PM (2pm Central). Thursday sprints will be at 8:00 PM (8pm Central).