Jennifer Ibarra's Blog

No, it’s not deja vu. . But I’m thrilled to announce that I have a title–yes,again–for book two.

But before I announce it, let’s back up for a second. Several months ago, I told you that book two wasn’t quite ready to come into the world just yet. After great feedback from my beta readers and editor, I decided to take a giant step back (several, actually) and really try to understand the core of my story so I could figure out how best to tell it. I knew what I was tryin...

We’re now six days into November, and November happens to be my birthday month :). I don’t know about you, but I’m the kind of person who likes to celebrate my birthday all month long (what can I say, this is what happens when your birthday tends to fall around Thanksgiving time and you get kind of forgotten amidst all the holiday celebrations).

This month, I want to celebrate with all of you! So I’ve teamed up with several other authors on a huge giveaway. Check out all of the details below…

Elsa really said it best. Sometimes we just have to let it go.

I would be willing to bet that a vast majority of us writers are control freaks of some sort. We like control. We like being able to direct our characters and make things happen to them and be the gods of our worlds. It’s fun, right? But is this always a good thing for readers? Well…

There’s an old writing rule of thumb that says your characters should drive the plot, not the other way around. And while we may all think that’s exact...

Shall I start with the bad news or the good news?

Actually, I think it’s all good news. Really, I promise :).

I’ll start with the unexpected news. I had hoped to bring you Falling Starin the spring of 2015. Butmore than likely, it will not be ready until the summer or fall. Of course I don’t take any kind of delay lightly, and I’ve been working very hard on my end to get you the book in time, but at the end of the day, my #1 priority is to get you the best book I am capable of, and I will need...

Yeah. I know. I’ve used this analogy before. Numerous times. But the thing is, it’s true.So bear with me, because I’m about to pull out that comparison again.

When I ran my first marathon, I was incrediblyproud of myself. And rightfully so, right? Less than 1% of the population has ever completed a marathon, and now I would get to join that small brotherhood(/sisterhood) of masochists athletes who’d undertaken the grueling accomplishment of running 26.2 miles.

But I have to confess that it wasn...

This week I officially kicked off the revision process for, book two of my Polaris trilogy. And as I mentioned in my last post, I’m more than a little intimidated by the idea of going through this process again (especially since I can’t really remember anymore how I went about it the last time!). But today, I had a big realization that will set the tone for the rest of revision. It’ll be my mantra. And that is…

Play to your strengths.

A few years ago, when I sat down to do my perfor...

Whenmy friend and I ran our first marathon, she compared the experience to childbirth. She said it was every bit as long, painful, agonizing–and ultimately, rewarding. And then she told me something interesting. She said that scientists believe that the body triggers some sort of hormone that makes a woman forget just how painful childbirth is, so that she will get past the trauma of the experience and go on to give birth more times. I can attest to the fact that there’s a similar phenomenon...

This weekend was a whirlwind as I attended my first ever Book Expo conference–otherwise known as BEA. It’s a booklover’s paradise, basically: authors, readers, publishers, and booksellers all coming together to celebrate books and each other. I’ve long dreamed of going, and I finally got to do so this year, so I checked that off the bucket list :).

I went primarily for aspecial conference-within-a-conference calleduPublishU,which focuses on helping self-publishers get to success with their boo...

We all know how critical it is to have proper distance from your draft before we go diving into the revision process. We’ve spent the last few weeks/months pouring our hearts and souls into these stories, so it’s only natural that we become attached to the words on the page and may not want to make the necessary changes to make the story really sing. (Also, let’s face it, we’re probably tired as all get out,so the last thing we want to do is rewrite or chop off anything.)

But not only is it im...

We runners are obsessed with pace. We buy special watches, we download and analyze our data compulsively, we judge how much we liked a race by how fast we finished it.

So it’s no wonder that this kind of thinking has bled over into my writing, too.

Last year, when I finished the first draft ofThe Polaris Uprising, I wasastounded by the fact that I’d written it in five and a halfmonths.I’d been aiming for six months (and truthfully, I was preparing myself for the possibility that it could take e...