Sarah-JaneLehoux's blog

Happy Days are Here Again!

Today I'm not going to snark at you. I'm too happy to get all ruffled up about special snowflakes and poor etiquette. You see, today I finished writing my third novel. And I'm currently in a state of euphoria that even sparkly vampires can't drain from me.

I first started writing this book in 2007, two years before I was contracted for the first book in the series. I just couldn't finish it. Since then, I've written in spurts, a week here, a day there. But I couldn't find it in me to just get the job done.

Now I don't believe in writer's block. Never have, never will. As far as I'm concerned, it's an excuse for lazy writers. And that's what I was: a lazy writer.

But you know what? That's okay.

Sometimes a story will hit you and the words fly onto the screen so effortessly you don't even realize you're writing it. Other times, a story needs to be dragged kicking and screaming from your head to your keyboard. Either way, you're learning. You're growing as a writer.

And that's a happy thing.

Inigo Montoya will Show You the Way

The burden of a writer is to find new ways to say the same old thing. Which can be quite a challenge, but lucky for us, there is a lovely little thing called a thesaurus. Words, words, words. Take your pick and mix it up.

But be warned, my friends, because as a very wise man once said, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”Read more

Let's Talk About Rape

My last post was about writing believable sex scenes. No matter how good or bad the sex is, it's still consensual, and therefore easier to write. Now I want to talk about non-consensual sex scenes, aka rape scenes. Yikes.Read more

Let's Talk about Sex

I'm back, beatches. Did ya miss me? Health issues are now (knock on wood) hopefully resolved, so I'm getting back into the writing groove. I had a few ideas of what I wanted to blog about first, but they all seemed to lead to the same thing: sex.Read more

All I Want For Christmas is...

'Tis the season and all that crap. I'm always a big bundle of bah humbug this time of year, but for those in the spirit, I thought we could have a chat about what to get for the writer in your life.Read more

Flies, Honey, Vinegar. Fill in the Blanks.

I've worked a lot of crap jobs over the years. And the crappiest were always in retail. For some reason, people make assumptions about you when you work retail. They assume you're stupid. They assume you can't get a better job somewhere else. They assume you have no authority, and that they can push you around because you are low man on the totem pole.

What they fail to realize is that seemingly powerless people have more influence than expected. And if you piss them off, there will be consequences. But the best part of these consequences is that you will probably never realize who screwed you over.Read more

Perfectly Imperfect

An acquaintance of mine is obsessed with perfection. "Everything has to be perfect." "Everything has to be one hundred percent." Those are his favourite sayings. And he is the most frazzled, unhappy person I've met in a looooong time. I'd love to tell him that perfection is an illusion and just plain impossible, but why bother? Some people just feel the need to drive themselves crazy trying to obtain an unobtainable standard.Read more

Are You a Writer?

If you've been paying attention to all the evil advice given on this blog, you'll notice a theme. Any guesses as to what that theme is?Read more

Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children!

Recycled from my blog as I just realized that today is Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Damn you, long weekends! You screw with my mind!Read more

So You Want to Edit Something. Whoop-de-doo.

Building upon my last post, which was a grumpy attempt to get writers to become self-aware (yes, that's what the whole writer versus stripper thing was about), I want to talk a bit about editing.Read more