Category: Uncategorized
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Writing Update
I joined a mastermind group of eight other women, who I met through the 20Booksto50K Facebook group. We are all newbies to published writing, and will chat regularly about what we’re learning/problems we’ve having, and hold each other accountable to writing goals (there’s a spreadsheet). I’m excited to have people to talk to about this…
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Let’s Get This F’ing Party Started.
I finally broke down and bought a couple of things to help me fix the pacing problem in Cate 1.0. Everybody loves/hates Save the Cat, so I basically ignored it because it seems like it’s everything I’ve ever learned in my English major. And my English teacher courses. And, you know, from reading a lot,…
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Ch-ch-ch-changes…
State of the Novel Update: This week I finally changed the title from Cate the Curst to Cate the Cursed. I revised episodes 1 and 2 into a pretty strong (I think) Chapter One for the book’s second draft, and posted the first half as a new episode 1 on Vella. I also re-edited the…
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Before I Begin…
(This is a writing exercise with a one-word prompt: Begin. I’m great at beginnings. Not so sure where it’s going though. Let’s see what happens. Check in with the note at the end.) I used to think I had a psychic link with someone behind the scenes at Disney. How else would you explain the…
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Wednesday Work-in-Progress
Today I hit pause on the new writing, and went back to look at what I had intended when I started Cate the Curst. Oh, sweet, naive me from April of 2020. This story is so not that story. I may still someday go back and write that story, but we’ve gone too far to…
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Tarot Tuesday
If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you know that I’ve been working on a book series in which a magical tarot card features pretty heavily. Being fairly new to tarot (although I’ve read a lot of books about witches, witchcraft, and fortune-telling), I’ve started using three card spreads to help guide character motivations and…
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Welcome!
I finally made the jump to separate my author life from the rest of my work. I hope you love this website as much as I do. All upcoming news, samples, designs, and community projects will start here first. Thanks for joining me! Subscribe to my newsletter to get updates:View post to subscribe to site…
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The Next Write Thing
So. Yes. To catch up, there was whole list of things I planned to do upon finishing the draft for Cate. Here we are, ten days later, and… I am actually doing them. Some of them. Several of them. You know what made it a little easier? Listening to cheesy music (mostly Broadway ballads) and…
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Previously…
Although the Cate series will be my first published work, it’s not my first attempt at writing. It’s not even my first attempt at novel writing. In 2011, after losing my position (at a school I loved) because of budget cuts, I put all of my frustrated creative energy into writing my first formal novel…
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Closure for Cate (and me)
The first draft is finished! I started this book in April 2020, while I was home trying to figure out whether or not we were ever going back to school. It’s based on an idea for an interlocking series I had been taking notes on for a while (which is just to say, there are…
Jenn Lessmann 