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One of my lovely followers on Instagram asked a few months ago how I plot my novels so I figured I'd answer that today. When I first sat down to write this blog my immediate answer was "I don't know. I just do." That's probably because every book is different in the process I follow. There's also a lot of thinking and marinating on ideas that happen. Like a lot, a lot. Sometimes I have vague ideas for a plot and the characters and I wake up one day (or sit down at my desk -

Happy December! I'm just going to dive right in and tell you the results of my November writing challenge (if you didn't read that post you can find it here ). To recap, my goal had two parts: write 50K and finish the first draft of the book I was working on. I went into the month thinking I'd need to write over 50K to finish the draft but boy was I wrong. Did I write 50K in November? Nope. I did not. Shocking I know. I ended up writing 38,338 words. I wanted to write the la

In the month of November I decided to challenge myself to write 50K words (or more) to finish the novel I'm working on. I have done this challenge before (and hit the goal) so I knew it was doable but it has been a few years since I've attempted it. But my life is a little more busy now so I wasn't entirely sure how it was going to go. To hit the goal I'd have to write about 1,667 words a day if I wrote every day which I knew wasn't going to happen (either because of Thanksgi

Hi! Welcome to "From the Desk of Marissa James"! I've been thinking of adding a blog to my website, a place for me to share longer updates, posts, thoughts that don't fit on a social media post or in a newsletter for a while. Back in the mid-2010s I had a blog (it was geared around food/cooking, fitness, and lifestyle) and recently I realized how much I missed the longer form of content. So here we are. I don't know how often I'll post on her but I'll be sure to share when th