Welcome to 2021! We are all anxious to put 2020 behind us and focus on a new year filled with promise and productivity. There are dreams of writing the next book, attending conferences, and having books signed in person! However, I realize the promise of a great 2021 may take a while to arrive and instead of being discouraged, I have been inspired online challenges … Continue reading Tic Tac Toe for Writers
I don’t know about you, but I’m on my way to rocking the quarantine fifteen, and before this is over, I’ll have passed the quaranineteen. And as I plop myself down at my desk every morning, I’m realizing that it’s just as important to feed our minds as it is our bodies… Continue reading Quarantine Creativity Boost
Who is ready for WriteOnCon? You know we are! For those who can’t wait until next week, I am going to give you a sneak peek into my presentation about neurodiversity. The entire presentation will be shown on Sunday, February 23, 2020, from 12:00 – 12:30 pm EST. Of course, if you get an extended ticket, you can view all events throughout March 22, 2020. … Continue reading Writing Neurodiverse Characters Responsibly
Holy moly! A new year. A new decade. Both come with excitement, motivation, and promise. But they also come with stress. If you’re like most people, you didn’t get a lot of writing done during the holidays. Either you were enjoying a house filled with friends and family, filling someone else’s house with holiday cheer, or hanging out at home stuck in a sugar rush-crash-rush-crash … Continue reading Jump Back into Writing With a Hop
Can posture improve your writing? This was a question I pondered when author Amber Smith visited me for a few days. In my efforts to be a good host, I kept trying to encourage her to write in “comfy” spots, like my soft couch or a beanbag chair outside. She confessed she had to sit upright at a desk or table to feel like she … Continue reading MYC: Sit Up Straight!
First pages of a manuscript are tough to get right. Advice generally encourages writers to jump into the action to hook readers, but readers need a certain amount of information first in order to care about the people or events. I’ve written about this before in my post “Let the Main Character Drive the Bus,” and now I’d like to come at it from a … Continue reading MYC: The Hook & the Backpedal
Those of you who have read this blog for any length of time know how enthusiastic we are about critique partners. While polishing my work-in-progress recently, I was reminded of how much wisdom my own CPs have to share. I was finishing the revisions on my manuscript when I realized that my main character spends a lot of time being afraid in the story. A … Continue reading Writing Emotions: Our Favorite Tips
Hello! Today I’m helping authors Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi launch their new book, The Emotion Thesaurus (Second Edition)! You might know about The Emotion Thesaurus and even have it on your shelf. But chances are, you may not have known a second edition was in the works. Becca and Angela decided to keep it a surprise and only recently announced the book was releasing! So not only … Continue reading Book Release! Emotion Thesaurus Second Edition
Have you ever held onto a secret you’ve been dying to share, and then finally…you can? For the last few weeks I’ve been helping Angela and Becca at Writers Helping Writers keep a BIG secret…what the next book in their thesaurus series will be. It might seem strange to not tell one’s readers what book you’re planning to release…unless you happen to write books on Show, … Continue reading Big News: New Thesaurus Revealed!
Do you believe in ghosts?
Do you love ghost stories?
Do you want to write ghost stories?
If you answered yes to these questions, then I dare you to visit the historic and haunted city of Charleston, South Carolina and ponder the ghostly stories inhabiting the shadowy corners of your mind. Continue reading Ghosts, Haunts, and Haints: A Paranormal Writing Weekend
I find myself, to my surprise, writing a novel in verse. Though I have written poetry in the past, novels in verse always seemed mysterious to me, almost as much so as the work of those sorcerer illustrators. How does one write a story, with narrative, out of a poem? How do you even begin a novel in verse? Eking out one poem feels like … Continue reading The Two Pieces of Advice that Made Writing A Verse Novel Seem Possible
I love the kinds of stories that make you look in the dark corners of your room or order a clear shower curtain so you know if a knife-wielding man dressed as a woman is going to stab you. (True story – I watched the movie Shutter Island while on the treadmill. I couldn’t stop looking behind me. You can see how that’s not a … Continue reading Tackling the Terrifying. How to Write Scary
