Sydney Strand

Once upon a time, I received a book contract after answering a classified ad. Yep. I did. From a Big Five Publisher. In fact, it is the biggest of The Big Five. I got the contract even though I wasn't writing YA. I was writing adult mysteries! But I went with my gut and went with the shiny and new opportunity, even though I had heard (and keep hearing to this day): Don't let a new story reel you in. Finish the one you're on. Just get to the end, you sloth! Okay, that last one might be mine. I will be the first one to tell you not to be lured by the pretty, shiny, highly attractive new story. You know, the one that calls to you like a siren because the other story's turned into a 500-pound naggy hag when you proposed to a 120-pound beauty queen getting her Ph.D. in rocket science. Caveat I say this advice is NOT good advice to the new writer who has never, not once, completed a story from start to end that's over at least 20,000 words. If th...

So, there's a thing such as getting stuck in writing. Stuck can mean a few things, a couple of which may be 1) polishing and polishing and polishing the same scene, rather than moving forward and just getting going or even worse, 2) procrastinating and NOT writing because you can't unstick yourself. What can you do? String Up a Clothesline What the hey? What does that mean, Sydney you kook! We're all readers here, right? Well, if you've ever read The Little House on the Prairie series, you may remember a scene where Pa has to string up a clothesline between the house and the barn because during blizzards, he can't SEE the barn. He knows it's there, but he has no idea how to get there. So he strings that clothesline and even though he can't see he destination, he can feel where he's going based on that guide. And that's what you need to do with this stalled story: string a clothesline to get you to The End. How Do You String a ...

I'm so super proud of myself. Today, I saw a tweet from a publisher looking for the kind of stuff I wrote. This publisher--rather, this imprint--gets its books into Target--a big, huge deal (not that many books get into Target). I heard the siren's call. And for a moment...nay, five minutes' worth of moments...I contemplated speed writing a book of 50,000 words by the January 30 deadline. Nevermind that it would be total first-draft crap. Nevermind that I would pretty much be a very neglectful mother, putting her children in front of the TV for, well, every waking moment. Nevermind the chocolate and stress that such an endeavor would entail. Luckily, at Minute Six, sanity returned. And I put this story into my Goals for 2016. And I created a Pinterest board for that story and the ideas that came to me in those five gloriously insane moments. You see, I have a writing plan for 2015. And this Five-Minutes-of-Crazy Story doesn't fit in tha...