Fire

Chronicling The Craft: 20,000 Words

/ saraletourneau / 10 Comments

Textbooks + Statistics = Back To School?

Chapters In Progress: 5

Chapters Completed: 4

The writing vacation was a huge success! Instead of taking almost 2 months to reach the next milestone (as it did last time), it took less than one week to go from 15,000 words to 20,000 (or 21,000+, to be accurate). Honestly, it felt more like shooting from one benchmark to the next, because of the shorter span of time. I guess that’s what happens when you a) plan to spend a large amount of time concentrating on your work-in-progress, and b) are “in the flow” during each sit-down. And even though I purposely set no concrete goals for this week, I can’t explain how proud and excited I am with what I accomplished in a few days.  Continue reading →

Recent Reads: “Bitterblue” by Kristin Cashore

/ saraletourneau

I remember the day I first heard of Kristin Cashore. It was the 2010 Boston Book Festival, and the YA fantasy author was one of four speakers at a young adult fiction forum. My interest in Cashore’s work immediately pricked up when I found out which genre she writes in. However, what convinced me to buy her two previously published books (Graceling and Fire) on the spot was the moment she opened up for the audience a notebook where she was writing the first draft of her third book. I thought, “YES! She writes her first drafts by hand, too! We have something in common!” I read Graceling and Fire back to back shortly after the Boston Book Festival, and adored them both. So I was eager to read Bitterblue, the novel Cashore offered a “sneak peek” of during the festival, as soon as it was published. Continue reading →