Category: How To and Tips
The Business Of Being An Author
By Zelly Ruskin I thought the hard part was going to be finishing the book. Then I published. The image of an author is often one of someone chewing a pencil, with wads of papers beneath their chair. Maybe they’d be deep in thought, or frazzled—or both. In today’s world, they are sitting uninspired at […]
Rules? What Are These Rules Of Which You Strangely Speak?
By Christina Hamlett I was a relative newcomer to the dizzying blogosphere realm ten years ago. I’d click on Facebook links if a particular blog topic interested me. I’d even leave comments and occasionally find myself in a cyber conversation with kindred spirits. According to statistics at http://www.worldometers.info, almost four million blogs are being posted […]
When Is Your Next Book Coming Out?
By Rebecca Warner “What are your writing now?” “When is your next book coming out?” For me, an author who has hung up her spurs and has no plans to get back in the saddle, these questions bring up a sense of anxiety. A slight feeling of failure. A touch of guilt. It’s getting easier […]
Momentous and Mundane: Spending Time with Writer’s Block
By Callie J. Smith I dread writer’s block. Unfortunately, my most recent novel, The Joy of a Field, left me spending more time with writer’s block than either of the other novels in my Sacred Grounds trilogy. I kept imagining the block creeping out from some opaque corner of my mind where it lived, always […]
How To Get Your Book Noticed
It’s impossible to forget the thrill of the moment when you come across a great idea for a novel. For me, the idea was a child with past life memories of being a soldier in Vietnam and the challenges this presented his mother as she looked for answers. As I wrote, this grew into alternating […]
Writer’s Block and the Refrigerator
What is the spark that ignites your creativity? What sets your imagination on fire, sending you to your laptop or notebook to record those thoughts before they fly away? What keeps you moving forward? This is the best part of writing, letting the words fly across the page as your characters take shape and you […]
Spending Seven Years Writing a Novel: A Study in Madness or Determination?
Spending Seven Years Writing a Novel: A Study in Madness or Determination? This June, my fifth novel, Claire Casey’s Had Enough, will be released. When I shared the cover in my monthly newsletter, many friends said, “Wow, you wrote it so fast!” I laughed because that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m sharing this […]
What I Didn’t Know
by Beverly Burch It started with stories, a series of short fiction over a period of years. Some I published in literary journals, some lived on my computer, but the characters began to recur. I didn’t know they were going to do that. In a story with a new character, a woman from an earlier […]
From Damsel to Warrior: How Disney Princesses Shaped My Memoir
Once upon a time, women were taught to wait. Wait for Prince Charming, for the shoe to fit, for the happily ever after. But what happens when you realize life doesn’t come with a fairy godmother to wave her wand and grant your dreams? You grab a sword, get on a white horse, and get […]
A World Of Words
Señora Dull was my third-grade Spanish teacher. My eight-year-old friends and I found this hilarious. Señora Dull was my first language teacher, and in addition to basic vocabulary, useful phrases, and rhymes which I still remember (Chicle puesto en el cesto no molesta a la maestra), she taught us the difference between a ‘stop D’ […]
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