History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

An Attempted Year without Novels, and the Results

| December 11, 2022

Early this year, I decided that I didn’t want to write novels for a year to see where it got me. By July, I had decided “maybe just one novella.” But I’m here now to say no. I wrote my novella in July, and immediately knew that it needed more work. So I did some […]

Returning to Long Form Writing

| August 8, 2022

I started the year deciding that I didn’t want to write longer works for 2022, unless I came up with an idea that absolutely had to be longer. And I wound up with one of those ideas. And then a second one, when I realized the first one wouldn’t work as I had planned it. […]

Checking In after Six Months without Novel Writing

| July 11, 2022

Since early this year, I’ve been focusing only on short fiction and poetry, and not trying to write any novels or even novellas. It’s been a little over six months, so it’s time to check in. If you read my recap from last week, you probably noticed that there’s a novella on it now. I […]

Checking In after Three Months without Novel Writing

| April 4, 2022

It’s been roughly three months since I decided that I would put novels on the VERY backburner for 2022. I told myself that I would check in with this decision roughly quarterly to decide if it was still working for me. So far, the answer is a resounding yes. I’m still juggling a lot of […]

Choosing to Not Write Novels

| January 17, 2022

I’ve started this year with an email course on creativity, followed by a virtual class on setting goals and making plans. Both of these have got me thinking about what I do, why I do it, and what I want out of it. The shortest possible version is: I love to write. However, the more […]

The Timing from Idea to Book

| March 1, 2021

How long does it take between when an author gets an idea for a novel and when it comes out? That depends on a number of factors, including the author and their publication process. But the short answer is “longer than you’d think.” Between Facebook memories and archived emails, I’ve determined that the novel I […]

Setting Goals for 2021!

| January 5, 2021

While 2020 didn’t go entirely as planned for many folks, even after a promising start, I’m hopeful that 2021 will be an improvement. True, things can still get worse, but I’m choosing hope in terms of creating my goals this year. One of my goals for 2020 was to become agented, but that didn’t pan […]

Short Stories or Novels: Which Should You Tackle First?

| November 30, 2020

If you’re sliding into the end of November with a brand new novel draft in hand after NaNoWriMo, congratulations! If you didn’t quite reach the end of your novel, that’s okay too! What’s critical in either cases is that you finish. And then? You revise. If you’re new to writing, you may find a lot […]

Setting Goals for 2020

| January 2, 2020

Now that it’s 2020, it’s time to start looking at my writing goals for this coming year! Top of my list for this year is looking for an agent. I’ve got a young adult book that is pretty close to being ready to query agents with, so that’s going to be at the top of […]

Fun for Friday: Having Fun Writing Novels

| March 15, 2019

Check out this article on 3 ways to make writing your novel easier. While not all of the advice will apply to every author, there’s at least some commiseration that some novels are harder to write than other novels. And it’s not necessarily about how many novels, you’ve already written, either. It doesn’t automatically get […]