Somehow bad guys and gals are in many ways more challenging to create than our so-called heroes or heroines. This is an area of your writing that invites you to stretch yourself, to play with multiple violations, remembering that you will fall in love with this character, and you will have to manage, at the… Read more »
Writing a memoir is not easy. Like any genre, we need a compelling narrative arc driven by good scenes full of sensory details and great dialog. But we also need to create meaning from experience and offer takeaways for our readers. We need to claim our own emotional truth. Negative critics jabber away in our… Read more »
Regardless of the type of work you do, when you present yourself as a writer, you put a part of who you are into everything you create. That level of vulnerability makes it all the more important that you take steps to protect your privacy while promoting your writing online. If you’ve never given much… Read more »
The world is an overwhelming and chaotic place lately. How can you be expected to deal with everything on your plate and still find time to write? It’s tempting to blame recent events for our lack of personal time and ability to manage it. But if we are honest with ourselves, we would recall how… Read more »
Essays are having a hot moment right now, but they’ve been around for a long time. The word “essay” originates from the French word “essayer,” meaning “to try.” The form has certainly morphed with time, but in a sense boils down to the writer figuring out what they think and feel by writing about it…. Read more »
Writing a novel is a lengthy process, so it’s understandable that our inspiration can start to drift along the way. Inspiration often goes hand in hand with motivation – when we’re feeling excited and enthusiastic about our WIP the words flow more easily and the writing sessions fly by. Likewise, when we find ourselves feeling… Read more »
When I first moved to Los Angeles I watched a close friend, an actor, go out on audition after audition, only to be told, over and over, that was great but we’re going in a different direction. He had a fair amount of success—but I was fascinated by the regularity of failure that was part… Read more »
Writing a short story always seems so easy until you try to write one. Then, reality sets in. How do you fit in character development? An entire plot? So much to fit and so few words! Because of these constraints, short stories are a great tool to practice writing. Short stories can teach you to… Read more »
Second chance romances are wonderful because of that second chance. They are also very challenging, because we take two people who were in love and did not stay together, and we expect our reader to believe they should still be together¬–even if the couple does not think so! That being said, I love a good… Read more »
Writing can be intensely rewarding, but each book is also a messy, long-drawn trek. Here are five practices that may help you to navigate through these journeys: 1) Treat your writing as a job It is of course your vocation, but if you wait for inspiration from the heavens, you’ll never get anything completed. So:… Read more »
