For a while now, I have been wanting to make the experience a bit more interactive. I love giving you tips and how-to articles, but I also realize that you probably have a lot of things on your mind that you want to share, too. And I want to hear all about it! As I… Read more »
You’re at a your high school reunion and after exchanging pleasantries with your former classmates, someone asks that inevitable question: “You’re a writer? What’s your book about?” You stumble through a reply, explaining that it’s a character-driven coming-of-age story and that the main character is struggling to find love but finds herself instead… And then… Read more »
Writers have a number of fears–fear of failure, fear of success, fear of doing what they love–but perhaps the most insidious fear of all is that someone might steal their ideas. There’s been a lot of talk about this in the blogsphere lately. A few weeks ago, one writer blogged about sharing an idea with… Read more »
This week, I want to talk about fear. Originally, I had planned this week’s articles to talk about fear as it relates to the spooky, trick-or-treat, Halloween spirit. Yet now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and given some events that I recently learned about in the writing community last week, the fear I want… Read more »
In today’s mobile society, it can sometimes be a challenge to keep your thoughts organized. This is very important if you are a writer. Inspiration can hit you at any given moment, but thankfully there is an app for that. There are plenty of smartphones and apps out on the market today that can help… Read more »
In my final installment of ThrillerFest recaps and I thought I’d save one of my favorites for last. In her fabulous talk on Creative Consistency, Lisa Gardner shared three important steps that writers must take in order to get creative on demand. Being able to get creative on demand is a crucial aspect of being… Read more »
While at ThrillerFest, I had a chance to attend a couple of talks that discussed plot and story structure, though even then those sessions did also emphasize the importance of character. In fact, if I were to pinpoint a theme of all the panels I sat in on at the conference, I would say that… Read more »
As I mentioned in my introduction to the ThrillerFest recaps, I fully expected to learn a lot about plot, pacing and suspense. What I did NOT expect was that character development would be the central topic to just about every talk or panel I attended. Character development in a thriller? Actually, that idea is not… Read more »
Today we have an excellent guest post by Leanna Renee Hieber, author of DARKER STILL. I had the pleasure of chatting briefly with Leanna over lunch at the BEA Bloggers Conference. The minute I met her I could tell how passionate she is about historical fiction and the time period she writes about. At the… Read more »
There are many types of writing workshops out there, some more effective than others at giving you useful feedback on your writing. Whether you’re new to the workshop scene or have been participating in critique sessions for a long time, there’s one workshop method that’s been proven time and again to help writers improve their… Read more »
