Category: How To and Tips
Where I find the spark: Janet Hoggarth
Every book or article I have ever written has sprung from something else entirely. Several other ideas can be on the boil at the same time before I finally commit to writing a specific book. I will have written their rough synopsis (I never know the ending just the general direction), delved into the characters’ […]
Tips On Writing A Synopsis
Tips on writing a synopsis You can write the synopsis either before you write your novel, or after, but as I’m sure you are aware, you really should not submit fiction to an agent or publisher until the entire novel is written. Before giving tips on the nuts and bolts of writing the synopsis, it’s […]
On Inspiration
What Inspires Writers? Some authors publish two or more novels a year; others publish just one in a lifetime. Margaret Mitchell’s one-time Gone With the Wind comes to mind, in contrast to Karen Ranney, one of my favorite romance authors, who has written over fifty novels. Do these two types of author write differently? […]
Place In A Book – Do You Need To Go There?
Place in a book – do you need to go there? Some years ago I went to a talk by the award-winning Irish writer Colm Tóibín. It was after the launch of his much acclaimed novel, Brooklyn, and I remember him telling the audience that when he wrote Brooklyn he had never been to the […]
Inspiration and Writing
Inspiration and Writing By Catherine Bellizzi Inspiration for writing can come from the most unusual places. Even from something as misunderstood and anxiety-causing as assisted living. As I sat visiting my elderly aunt in her small apartment in the assisted living facility she had just moved into, I got the idea for my novel, The […]
Children Need To Write
All the teachers and parents I know are struggling to climb the piles of shoulds and coulds and woulds on behalf of the school age children they care for. They’re making learning choices for students who have been home from school for months, who will now be home all summer, and who may yet still […]
Perfect Heroines
By: Vanessa Westermann “The perfect heroine for our times” is how Canadian crime writer Barbara Fradkin described Kate Rowan, the protagonist of my mystery An Excuse For Murder. High praise indeed! Barbara identified Kate’s strengths as being her “wit, charm, and spirit balanced by impressive skills in self-defense and lock-picking”. I was overjoyed, especially because […]
Writing Through Tough Times: Tips And Tricks
The question comes up a lot: What’s your favorite part of the writing process? Usually this is a multiple choice question. Is your favorite part the beginning of the story, when everything is possible? Is it the middle when things have finally begun to gel? Is it the end when all the choices have narrowed […]
One True Sentence: How My Book Came to Be
By Marianne Ingheim I’d been trying to write a book for 10 years. First it was a novel, loosely based on stories I’d heard from my mother and grandmother. Then I decided I needed to tell the truth, so I started writing a memoir. I took classes, I read how-to books. I was going to […]
The Gap Between Intention and Execution
The book I intended to write was not the book I ended up writing. Oh, there are some similarities: I wanted to write a book about how we cannot truly process the environmental catastrophe that we are currently experiencing. I knew that I wanted the earth to send signals about this environmental catastrophe to my […]
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