Katiaesque

  • 31-Minute Challenge: A Family Affair? A Guest Post

    Today I am pleased to share another guest post from Dori Stone, a writer and enthusiastic participant of this month’s 31-minute challenge. I have seen it for myself and should have warned you: writing can be a highly contagious activity! 🙂 When I started the 31-day 31-minute challenge, excitement and determination filled me.  I hoped to…

    Katia Raina

  • 31 Minutes? Try 93! A Guest Post

    This week I’d like to welcome my writing friend, the delightful Jody Bilbo Staton, an overachieving YA and middle-grade novelist, with a guest post about her ambitiously vigorous trek through the month. Katia’s 31-minute challenge came at the perfect time, both as a welcome substitute for the standard (and usually vaguely worded) New Year’s resolutions, and as…

    Katia Raina

  • Day 8 of the 31-minute Challenge: Choosing, A Guest Post

    Today, I am excited to welcome a Pennsylvania writer for young people Wendy Greenley, who happens to be another 31-minute challenge participant. Read below to see how Wendy uses her 31-minutes each day, then visit her website at http://www.wendygreenley.com/ I’m Giving Katia Raina 31! Actually, I’m giving it to myself. What is it? It’s a…

    Katia Raina

  • Day 6 of the 31-Minute Challenge: Learn From Your Dog

    My three-something-year-old Brittany, Lucky, is a lovely, charming girl with quite impressive dog manners. Ask anyone in the neighborhood. 🙂 Still, like any dog she knows what she wants when she wants it. If you own a puppy of any breed, age or temperament, then you know perfectly well what a term “dogged” means. Dogged…

    Katia Raina

  • Day 4 of the 31-Minute Challenge: Getting Back In The Groove, A Guest Post

    Please welcome Dori Stone, who has been writing for years on a daily basis, but then got off track — that is, until now. Dori started on the 31-minute challenge early and is sharing what her journey has been like so far.  What do a wedding, a new grandbaby, a retired husband, aging parents, Facebook…

    Katia Raina

  • Writing Goals: A Progress Report

    Just a little more than a month ago I blogged about my new — or updated — writing goals. Writing vows, I called them. Summer is often my time to take stock, and re-adjusting my goals is one way I try to make sure I stay on the right writing track. This post is an update, for anyone…

    Katia Raina

  • The Call of Adventure

    Here I am crafting my latest story, mostly plotting right now. Using myths and age-old storytelling tricks to bend and twist my emerging book into shape. If you read Joseph Campbell’s “Hero With A Thousand Faces,” then you may know about how every story is at heart really an adventure, with a usually reluctant hero facing…

    Katia Raina

  • The Magic and The Price of Virtual … Reality?

    Two weeks away from the Magic Mirror! I am so sorry! Inexcusable! Unacceptable! Here is my excuse, anyway: my manuscript. I’ve been re-writing. Re-thinking. Re-plotting. The different possibilities of my emerging story have been driving me wild. Even with all that, though, I couldn’t stay away from the web — that sticky virtual web of Facebook-twitter-blogs-gossip.…

    Katia Raina

  • Fork In the Road

    If you have written several manuscripts — or read a bunch of books by the same author — you might notice everyone seems to have a bunch of recurring interests, or themes — different subjects, ideas, concepts that different people are constantly drawn to. So far, my themes seem to be, in no particular order: mirrors,…

    Katia Raina

  • Five Things I Love About Journalism

    So sorry I haven’t been here much lately. I haven’t forgotten this blog — my favorite hobby! It’s just that I have been busy not only writing, always writing, but also Changing My Life. I am here for a quick announcement: looks like I am getting back into journalism, folks! For now I am freelancing, mostly for…

    Katia Raina