Hyba Is Writing

Scrittorio Fall 2022: The Inaugural Issue - Now Released!   Check it out here!

 CozyWorld: A December Writing Challenge   Information about this writing event will be coming soon. Please check back again later!

  Information about this writing event is coming soon. Please check back again later!

Novella November - NOVella Writing Challenge This 2022, I've decided to set up a writing challenge called NOVella - or, in its longer form, Novella November. November is mostly known in the writing community as the month during which NaNoWriMo takes place - a writing challenge in which the goal is to write 50,000 words - the generally agreed-upon minimum length of a novel.  I wanted to do something a little different this year. Instead of reaching for 50,000 words, I want to write something shorter - but not a short story. So, starting this year, the NOVella writing challenge is going live!   The goal of the challenge is to write a novella of a minimum of 15,000 words. It can be about anything - and in any genre - but it just has to be a full story from beginning to end. That's about 500 words per day for the full month for the 15k word goal.  I figure that's a pretty fair challenge for those of us hoping to write a novella. For those of you who are hoping to write novels...

S03EP01: Ripping Off the Bandaid - TRANSCRIPT Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Hyba is Writing. My name is Hyba, and I’m a writer, editor, and learning digital artist. Mostly, though, I love stories. And that’s why I’m here. This is going to be a very short episode, because I’m essentially just ripping off the bandaid and pushing myself back into the podcasting sphere. You’re listening to the first episode of Season 3, which has been a long time coming! The last episode of Season 2 came out the 7th of January, 2022. As of my recording this, it is the 16th of October, 2022. So… it’s been a while. A lot has happened in the meantime, and I’m sure that the same is true for you. So, what have I been up to? I’ve been writing and working on different projects, as usual. Lately, the projects that have been taking up space in my mind include a murder mystery slash psychological suspense novel, a fantasy web fiction that I’m excited to continue updating soon, and a historical gothi...

Scrittorio Diaries: Creating a Digital Magazine At the end of this month, the inaugural issue of Scrittorio , my digital magazine on the craft of fiction writing, will be released. It's currently still in the works, but I am confident in my ability to get it ready to go for a release either on October 30 or October 31.  It's extremely exciting to see the magazine start to take form in the way that you imagined it! When I first started brainstorming for this project, I thought that the inaugural issue was going to be the perfect "sample" or "template" for readers and potential contributors, letting them see what the magazine is all about, and what kind of content is sought. At the time, I thought I could get the first issue out by end of summer.  Then I decided to postpone it to a Fall release, and by doing so found myself with 3 extra months to work with - so I thought, Why not put out a Submissions Open notice and get contributors for the first issue? I was...

Plotting with Spreadsheets It's not the most romantic-sounding plotting method, but I've been working with spreadsheets to help me plot my murder mystery novel-in-progress, Marie/Elise . If you've been around with me for a while, you'll have probably noticed that I've been working on Marie/Elise for... a very long time. One of the recurring problems with the story was a general indecision about the plot. Earlier versions of the book felt very juvenile to me. While not completely outside the realm of possibility, the settings I had chosen (one of which was a boarding school set on an island) made things much grander than they needed to be, and the series of events in earlier drafts were unconvincing. I must have reworked the plot over a dozen times - and with each iteration of Marie/Elise , I felt myself getting closer and closer to that vision of the book that I wanted.   As summer turned to autumn, however, I realized that once again, despite my most recent - and ...