Thoughts

This is where I describe my writing process, post updates, and share various thoughts and opinions.

  • Me, working on my query letter: “Titles Are Stupid,” a 66,000 word novel, is about a girl who loves the winter even though it tries to kill her.— Annemarie Plenert (@amtastical) January 15, 2019 I’m doing it. I’m prepping my…

  • When I am writing a draft of a novel, I aim to write one thousand words a day. Sometimes it is drudgery and I have to be very firm with myself to keep my eyes on my document and my…

  • I have written two novels front to back, including revisions and edits. I sent the first one to around fifty agents and received approximately fifty rejections, so I cried for a month and then shelved it. I wrote my second…

  • I’m going to start a new feature where I list the books I read, both by myself with my kids each month. I have two extreme readers who are well ahead of their grade levels (4 and 1), and one…

  • It’s been unreasonably cold in Winnipeg this week. Polar Vortex Shenanigans. It was actually -50°C with the wind chill the other day! The schools weren’t closed or anything, of course, and thank goodness, but it is hard to do anything…

  • It’s fucking freezing outside. I know I said in yesterday’s post that it gets colder where I grew up, but that doesn’t negate that -30°C with an extra -10° of wind chill is bitter AF. Living in this climate requires…

  • I live in Winnipeg. Lots of people call it Winterpeg because it’s accurate. And in the winter, there’s a lot of bitching and whining about the weather – too cold, too windy, too much snow, not enough snow, too sunny,…

  • This fall, the stars aligned and my partner and I were able to go to Ireland. It was as perfect as it was possible for a trip to be; we saw ruins, our bus got stuck in a sheep traffic…

  • I finished another draft of my novel today. Finished is a funny word, because it’s not anywhere close to finished-for-real, but it’s completed another phase of the process of trying to get it into a real live book that someday…

  • At last, at last, I have writing time again. The kids are back in school and I have long, glorious mornings of time to use as I see fit, and I plan to use it to plow through the final…