Every once in a while, Present Charlie has to reach out to Past Charlie to help out Future Charlie. That’s what this post is for. It’s a re-run of sorts, combining these three posts into one, while making a few updates along the way. Feel free to read along, but mostly this is just for […]
On Monday morning I had a plan for the week. “I will take thirty minutes a day, right around lunch hour, to do something for myself.” Quite specifically, that “something” was to be resurrecting my work on the Ronald manuscript. A couple weeks ago I’d printed out the manuscript-in-progress. My first order of business? Getting […]
It’s the night before Christmas and here in my house Sit me and the kids and also my spouse. We gather in front of the TV at nine To watch a great film for the one hundredth time. With food on our plates and with drinks in the mix We pop in […]
Whelp, that’s just how writing works. The author throws a bunch of words on the page, liberally slashes away at them with a red pen, and then replaces them with more different words.—Charlie Hills, September 20, 2019 While that broadly describes how writing works, individual authors do follow their own, unique editing patterns, chief of […]
Guess what? I started working on this again! Not much, since I’m not exactly swimming in free time here, but enough that I’ve finally finished Chapter One. [Person in the back row raises hand] Yes? “What do you mean by finished chapter one? I thought you finished it last May?” No I didn’t. “Yes. Yes […]
This is a post of mine from about six and a half years ago on a more different blog, but it felt like a good thematic follow-up to last week’s post. Also, I have nothing prepared for this week and only about three minutes of free time. So enjoy the rerun. Unless you’ve never read […]
I’ve created a Microsoft Word document to be used as a manuscript template. Taking advantage of the power of Microsoft Word, this gets you up and running quickly, boosts workflow, and keeps your novel formatted the way your agent or editor wants to see it.
Lest this particular project wither and die immediately after planting, I’d like to keep going and continue to upload chapters as they’re ready. And, from time to time, even before they’re ready. The opening scene last week began in medias res, which is a Latin phrase meaning, “I love abusing storytelling tropes.” In layman’s terms, […]
I came up with the idea for Ronald in May of 2013, around fifty-two thousand nine hundred and thirty hours ago. I didn’t begin any real work on it until NaNoWriMo that year, where I plowed through the first draft, start to finish. It was, like any NaNo result, just okay. December 2013 began with […]
This is Part 3 of a three-part series. If you haven’t already, I recommend reading Part 1 first. Then Part 2. And if you’re still interested in seeing how this all ends, just start scrolling down from here. After Rachel left Barry at the alter and moved in with her high school friend Monica, she […]