Do you feel battered and bruised after a writing session? Does your mind and body ache? That’s because writing is a sport. You must commit to it, train for it, and love it even when you hate it. All athletes start at the same place. They find a sport they love and work towards improving… Read more »
We all read them. We all send them. Some of us have thousands of them hanging around. That’s right, today, we’re going to talk about how to edit an email. Editing personal and business correspondence is a bit different from editing creative work. Let’s take a look. Your Mindset The first step when you edit… Read more »
Well, it’s August, and that means we’ve passed the halfway mark for the year of 2021, and boy, am I looking for ways to revitalize my practice after losing writing steam. Those new year’s goals are far behind me, plenty laying littered and broken along my yearly writing journey. I’d love to say my passion… Read more »
As writers, I think we can all agree that copyediting is an important part of the publishing process. We know that if a reader notices an error, it will probably take him out of the lucid dream of reading. Do that enough times, and he’ll sigh with disgust and toss the book/article/essay aside for good…. Read more »
The Liability of Love, my latest novel, touches on many aspects of love, but the central relationship is a marriage between two of the main characters, Margaret and Douglas, who meet at a party in their early 20s. This happens in the mid-1980s, and though it seems quaint today, that’s how a lot of people… Read more »
Have You Accepted the Challenge? I challenged you in April to embark on a 2021 Virtual Writers Sabbatical, which is a build your own adventure focused on you and your writing craft. If you’ve already joined, I’m glad to have you along for the tour. If not, it’s never too late to break out of… Read more »
It’s every writer’s worst nightmare—staring at a blank notebook page or computer screen with no motivation or inspiration. Feeling completely stuck. Writer’s block is more than just a joke or some kind of “fluke” thing. In fact, some of the most well-known writers in the world have to deal with it from time to time. … Read more »
I’ve always believed that a story idea is a magical butterfly that flutters around and lands on the one person that has the magnificence—that perfect combination of experience, perspective, emotions, heart, mind, and desire—to bring the story to life in such a way that reflects the writer’s soul and captures the reader’s heart. If a… Read more »
Toni Morrison once said, “If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” This is my absolute favorite quote about writing because it empowers me with the courage to try anything. It’s an awesome feeling, this surge of courage, but let us back up a… Read more »
When you are writing a memoir, you spend a lot of your time excavating a past that is often elusive. To bring a memory to life on the page, you have to call up all the myriad details that filled it with emotion and meaning at the time, and the full force of any memory… Read more »
