Personally, I don’t like to write to music, unless it’s instrumental or part of the background noise if I’m writing outside the house. That doesn’t mean music isn’t a part of my writing journey, though, because there are times when I do need something to psych me up for my writing. This year’s playlist is all about happiness and low…
Category: NaNoWriMo
The Road to NaNoWriMo 2018: A Prep Overview
One of the reasons why I disappeared from this blog had to do with the fact that I had spent most of my writing life in September and October working on the storyboard for the next Hideaway Trilogy book, Ten Weeks and Counting (title may change upon notice). While I might not be able to blog every day like I did when…
The Good and The Bad
Let me start with the bad news first: This may be the last time I will be posting on this blog, or at least in this space. There are a lot of things going on–novel revisions being one of them (and I’ll get to this later)–but the main thing is that I’ve decided on moving this blog to a new…
The Road to NaNoWriMo: Week 2 and 3 Recap
I’m sorry I forgot to post last week; I had so many things going on over the weekend that I wasn’t able to post anything substantial. But what’s most important to note here is that, in the span of three weeks, I managed to do something that I would not have been able to do in any year: I FINISHED!…
The Road to NaNoWriMo 2016: Week 1 Progress
(Screengrab: my original Scrivener file for Nine Years Away. Click to enlarge!) And we’re off! It’s been only five days, but I’ve been seeing some progress. Right now my word count is at 14,977 words, with an average of 2.496 words daily according to the NaNoWriMo site–a little over the 2,000 words per day that I’ve allotted for myself this…
The Road to NaNoWriMo 2016: A Story Spiral
I got the concept of story spirals from fellow Pinay author Ines Bautista Yao, who publishes outtakes from #romanceclass books on her blog. I wrote my own story spiral for Crushingly Close on Ines’ blog (you can read it here), but since I was already getting restless over NaNoWriMo I decided I should do one for this year’s book as…
The Road to NaNoWriMo 2016: Building Characters
One of the weaknesses that I’ve noticed in my writing comes from characterization: judging from the reviews that I’ve gotten for my books, it seems as if my characters don’t seem to fall in line with the other beats of the story. I understand where this is coming from–in a way, it’s a leftover from my days as a pantser–but…
The Road to NaNoWriMo 2016: It’s Live!
It’s October! And I’ve already posted my novel on the NaNoWriMo website! Yay! [/waves pompoms] Here’s the synopsis, which I put together on Sunday afternoon when I was assembling my NaNo page: Nine years ago, Kim Del Rosario suffered the worst humiliation of her life when Christian Mendiola abandoned her at the prom. So why can’t she shake him off the moment…
The Road to NaNoWriMo 2016: Yes, I’m Outlining Now
Those of you who have read my interview on Jho Litonjua’s blog may remember that I have mentioned writing with outlines. This is a departure from the way that I used to write, and it sounds like a betrayal whenever I mention what a big difference outlining has made in my writing. You see, Save the Cake and Crushingly Close were…
My Life In Tweets
Right now my Twitter feed is a mess of political posts (it is an election year in the Philippines, after all) but I’ve managed to sneak in a few peeks into my life in the meantime. Here are some highlights: So here’s a thing: https://t.co/U7vVMl9HC2 — Stella Torres (@TheStellaTorres) April 11, 2016 Yes, the book is coming. Yes, the title…