10 Minute Novelists

Guest Post: 10 Minute Novelists Conference Can Change Your Writing Forever!

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10MinConIn this saturated market, you can’t afford to be a mediocre writer.

For most of us, it’s not enough to read books or depend on beta readers to show what’s precisely wrong with our manuscripts. We plow on, submitting here or there, facing rejection after rejection, questioning our creative choices.   

What if we gave ourselves a weekend to really grow? What if we could sit with a well-experienced literary agent and get the inside secrets to writing good fiction? What if we invested wisely in instruction that could make a huge difference in our careers? What if we challenged ourselves to excel in ways we hadn’t before?  Don’t you think that your art is worth it? Don’t you think that your career is worth it?    Continue reading →

Guest Post: 10MINCON is Coming! Register Now.

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10MinCon

As writers, some days we struggle to find ten minutes in a day to dedicate to our writing. We scrape together small snippets of time each day, adding words to our work-in-progress. Those words add up. Our small things, brought together, can make something great.

The writers of the Facebook group 10 Minute Novelists believe that this is true. Started by Katharine Grubb, who wrote the book, Write A Novel in Ten Minutes A Day, the Facebook group offers tips, encouragement, and community for time-crunched writers world wide.
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Guest Post: Small Things Brought Together

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(Or How to Grow As A 10 Minute Novelist)

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Back in 2006, I did a pretty small thing: I decided to take my writing career seriously. Now the problem I had, besides a lack of confidence, was that I didn’t have any time to do this. My time was consistently taken up by the other small things in my life: my five children, who were, at the time between the ages of six months and eight years old.

I decided that whatever effort I could put toward my dreams of writing would be worth it, even the smallest. So I set my timer and did my best to write ten minutes a day. If I was lucky, I could get several ten minute increments of writing in between laundry, meals, homeschooling and other domestic duties. Because I am a mother, I understood then and I understand now that true growth doesn’t come in leaps and bounds. Growth comes in the tiniest of disciplines. My children grow because I feed them daily. They learn how to read, how to be a decent human being, and how to become who they were destined to be by slow, steady growth. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Life Lessons Gleaned from Novel Writing

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10MinuteNovelists.com

Life Lessons Gleaned from Novel Writing (May 25, 2017)

“What I discovered, however, after completing those fifty thousand words and several books’ worth more, is that those skills and habits translate well into other areas of life. The lessons I’ve learned can be applied to a variety of tasks, projects, and seemingly unattainable aspirations. Put simply, writing novels taught me how to accomplish big goals over long periods of time.”

 

Interview with Author Quenby Olson

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Although we live geographically close, I met Quenby Olson through an international Facebook group, 10 Minute Novelists. The more I read her work, the more impressed I am with her writing ability. I’m grateful she took the time to answer some questions for me!

Your published books and short story are so diverse. I get the sense both from your writer’s voice and your stylistic choices such as tense and point of view, that you read very widely. Am I correct, and what genre do you most enjoy reading?

I do read very widely! I remember in school (I was homeschooled) reading everything from Little Women to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to the latest John Grisham thriller. I also have a tendency to go through obsessive periods of reading all about a certain point in history, or the entire catalog of a single author. My favorite is probably historical, and that could be romance, non-fiction, mystery, etc. I think it’s the draw of being pulled into another time, not only another place, that I find so attractive and keeps me coming back for more. Continue reading →