Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

  What is the IWSG? Read on! Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. The awesome co-hosts for the May 4 posting of the IWSG are Kim Elliott, Melissa Maygrove, Chemist Ken, Lee Lowery, and Nancy Gideon! Be sure you stop in and vis

  What is the IWSG? Read on! Purpose:   To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting:   The first Wednesday of every month is officially   Insecure Writer’s Support Group   day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting!   You ready? Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! March 2 question (always optional!) - Have you ever been conflicted about writing a story or adding a scene to a story? How did you decide to write it or not?   The awesome co-hosts for the March 2 posting of the IWSG are 

    Spring is springing all over the place, and I'm writing my little heart out. I think I have shared already that I decided the only thing to do about my utter mess of a draft of my new novel was... to write it over. I'm now approaching the 20,000-word mark (i.e., about 1/4 of the way), and my initial concerns about this approach are getting nicely put to rest. Of course, I won't really know if it's any less messy until I get to the end and read it over, but I feel  like I know much better where I'm going and why, and I'm picking up the characters that got neglected the first time around.  It's not a terribly fast process--it's going to take the same 6 weeks or so to draft as it did the first time. Honestly, that's about as much as I can handle typing per day, so even though I think it's flowing better (at least at the moment), I can't do much over 2000 words/day. That's due to limitations both physical--I'm trying to avoid a flare-

    What is the IWSG?   We are a group of writers who gather on the Internet to offer support and encouragement to each other! And we owe it all to the founder, Ninja Captain Alex Cavanaugh. Thanks, Alex! Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post.

    That photo is from New Zealand a couple of years ago, but it will do as a stand-in for what I'm up to next. The blog, and the writing, will be on hold for the month of November while I'm trekking in Nepal! I'm super excited to be doing this, and will try to throw a photo or two your way while I'm there, but no promises, other than a weekly photo from the archives for you to enjoy. I'll be traveling with Second Son and a couple of friends, as part of an organized group of 7. Meanwhile, it's been a while since I reported on my writing. It hasn't been going all that well, in part because of travel past and future (after a trip, I have to edit the photos, and before a trip I'm all about futzing with my gear over and over!). I did finish the total re-write of the story that was rejected from the IWSG collection last year--and I mean total. All I kept were the characters and most of the plot. That's out on submissions, but that's the only writing s

  The IWSG is a fantastic group of writers and bloggers who share posts the first Wednesday of each  month. Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! The awesome co-hosts for the September 1 posting of the IWSG are:   Jemima Pett, J Lenni Dorner, Cathrina Constantine, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, and Mary Aalgaard!   Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.  Remember, the question is optional!    October 6 question - In your writing, where do you draw the line, with either topics or la

This question recently came up on the IWSG Facebook page: how do you keep momentum when you finish a project? Do you move right on to the next? Take a break? For how long? Since I just finished the draft of my new story it felt like a good time to consider the question, as I, um, flail around trying to figure out what I'm doing. The fact that I mentioned this last week and am still working on it is probably all you need to know! Drafting a novel is a pretty intense exercise for me. I write every day, aiming for anywhere from 1000 to 3000 words, and spend a lot of my time thinking about the story, what I've missed, what comes next, trying to live inside the heads of my characters. So no big surprise that finishing always leaves me feeling... flat. This time, it seems to have also left me with a lot of thoughts about everything that's wrong with the story. The first thing I did when I finished was take a day off. Instead of writing, I took care of business, even cleaned the h

  It's time once again for the Insecure Writer's Support Group monthly post!    The IWSG is a fantastic group of writers and bloggers who share posts the first Wednesday of each  month. Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! The awesome co-hosts for the September 1 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass (me!), T. Powell Coltrin @Journaling Woman,   Natalie Aguirre,   Karen Lynn,  and  C. Lee McKenzie! Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.  Remember, the question is optional!

I just realized this week that I should have signed up for Camp NaNo. Oh well, the words are coming as well as--no, better than I could have hoped. I'm now up to 26,500+, and have sent in one application for an artist's residency. On the novel, I've finally gone back to the outline, realized some important things had gotten left out, and decided to write the missing scenes but worry later about working them in at the right place. Then I carry on from wherever I left off as though it had been that way all along. I suspect editing this one is going to be a tough project. I'm also getting up at 6 or earlier almost every day to hike/bike before it gets too hot, and I'm struggling with the side-effects of that. Napping morning and afternoon feels a bit decadent, but I find it impossible to keep writing when I'm that sleepy!  Finally, watch this space--the blog will be moving soon (probably in September) to a new home on my soon-to-be unveiled author web site! There w

Time for a quick reality check on the writer. I haven't reported on submissions for a while, so here goes: May: 2 submissions June: 1 submission 2 rejections, one outstanding. I need to do a reality check on one story, which has about 6 rejections. Might be fine, might be deluding myself. It's SF--if anyone wants to take a read, let me know and I'll appreciate your feedback. I also need to write some more stories just for submission and stop sharing everything here on the blog! Lately the only short stories I've written have been for blog-hop prompts. Writing and planning/plotting: Progress on the new book/series is finally starting to happen, though much of what I'm doing now may just be exercises to get the juices flowing, or even pure procrastination. But the plot/"outline" for the new book is taking shape at least a little. To help matters along (and/or to feel like I'm writing even if I'm not), I've been writing an extensive biography of

World-building the next novel The germ of my next novel has been in my head for well over a year, but forcing it into some kind of shape has been surprisingly hard. I have some ideas for a couple of reasons for this. For one thing, we can fall back on the ways that grief, loss, and trauma have messed with my head. Focus has never been my strong suit, and it's worse now.  I think that the issues with creating a new world go beyond that, though. I've been writing books in the Pismawallops PTA series for about 7 years, with some ventures back into the world of the Ninja Librarian. In other words, I haven't had to create a story-world from scratch in a very long time. In fact, the last time I did so was the goofy fantasy world of Halitor the Hero --published in 2014 (and I think drafted in 2013 or earlier--probably right after Return to Skunk Corners and while I was working on Death By Trombone ).  All of which is to say: the last time I created a new world, I was a different w

 Dang! Forgot to hit "publish" before I went camping!   Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Every month, the IWSG provides an optional question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!  The awesome co-host

Death By Donut has launched! The Pismawallops PTA series is, at least for the moment, at rest. I am free at last to follow up with the new sleuth who took up residence in my brain over a year ago. Or am I? It feels like everywhere I turn with my new characters I come crashing up against something that feels too personal, or too disturbing. I could try to write a mystery without a murder, but it's not just the primary death--it's people's backstories with their losses and traumas, all sorts of things. I'm a little scared to move forward. Am I afraid of my own feelings, or of what others will think if I write something that few people will actually know resonates with my own experience? And isn't writing about our own pain part of what we do? I could shift from mystery to other genres, but for one thing, mysteries are what I write, what I know how to write and what my readers are coming to expect. For another, I think the basic problem will always be there: I now kn