Category Craft Techniques | Kelly Chastain

Travel Writing Strategies: Part One – The Farmer’s Market

You know how much I love travel writing, and lately I’ve been working on two essays from my time in Portugal last January. One is polished and ready to go. Yay! Because I’m on a roll, and taking a mental break from all the debauchery in my novel, I thought I’d spend some time talking about travel writing strategies, and how we don’t have to travel to the end of the world in order to write a great travel essay. Between May and October, my little town hosts a Farmer’s Market every Wednesday, and guess who’s going today. Moi. These pics are from last year. Shhh!

The Mums and The Rooster are headed to my casa for lunch and a little time on a local trail. Afterward, we’ll storm the market. I know, I know, they get a lot of crap as the trendy thing to do, and have been earmarked as Yuppie fun. Forget all that nonsense.

NaNoWriMo: Top 5 Tips To Get Through Week Two

For the record: This NaNoWriMo thing is a roller coaster. After a little cross-eyed slump from week two, I found my mojo and rustled up some fresh ideas on how to ramp up the tension as I head into the middle of the The Book. I had to get real with myself about how my characters would behave. Not how I would love to see them portrayed on screen, but in real life. Or in fiction life, rather. I had to get out of my thinking rut in order to push forward with all this breakneck drafting.

Thanks to Ian McEwan, I Have The Worst Book Hangover Ever

It’s all because of Atonement. I have drank from the well of Ian McEwan and I fear I’ll never be quite the same again. In fact, I know I won’t be the same. I have not thought about a book as much as I have thought about this book. Ever. I haven’t so much as touched another book since I finished it and it has been over two weeks. I am grieving the loss of the characters and not getting to hang out with them. It’s worse than a blaring headache, because a headache can be handled with a few Advil. It’s the writing that won’t let me go. How can we stay in the heads of these characters the whole time without it feeling like the Whinerton’s Family Reunion?