Category: How To and Tips
A Gift For You — Holidays For Writers
Where are you in your writing life? Looking for a good idea? Slogging through that first draft? In the glory of revisions? Here’s the gift. You have already gotten the holiday present you always wanted. Remember when that idea came to you? The seductive, encircling beginning of the possibility that you, just like you always […]
High Expectations Kept Me From Seeing My Success
“When did you first consider yourself a writer?” The question came from a writing coach facilitating an online group class. After considering this, the answer was fuzzy. “Two…maybe three years, after I published my book?” The teacher’s eyes widened as the rest of the class looked on, each face staring out from individual video squares […]
On Finding The Right Writing Advice
In his poem ‘In My Craft or Sullen Art’, Dylan Thomas tells of his writing being ‘Exercised in the still night / When only the moon rages / And the lovers lie abed.’ It’s a seemingly perfect image – a writer, scribbling away at a desk set before a window, his ink drying under a […]
Genre Hopping
I am a genre hopper. There. I said it. My first novel, Trouble the Water, is historical fiction, and my second, That’s Not a Thing, is contemporary. People keep asking me how this can be, how one author can inhabit two different spheres? But isn’t this the story of what we, as women, do so […]
Drafting in Sequences
As an LA native, most of my in-person writing buddies are screenwriters. I’ve learned so much from them. The way they break down story is fascinating to me. One of the things they swear by is a method that involves constructing a story in sequences. I started using sequences (albeit clumsily) in my first published […]
Sometimes You Have to Stumble
On New Year’s Eve, My Own True Love and I stood in the main square in Salzburg and waited for the countdown to midnight to begin. It was raining, an icy drizzle that occasionally opened up into something more. The square was crowded with happy drunks. Not my favorite combination. But dancing in the square […]
What Your Younger Self Can Teach You About Writing
We’ve all done those self-actualizing and inspirational exercises where we write a letter to our younger self, haven’t we? Where we look back at our frazzled crazy teenage personas, and wish we could tell them to relax, or stop worrying, or focus on the big picture instead of who has the best hair or whether […]
Make ‘em Laugh
Humour in writing? That’s a toughie, how do I know that what makes me laugh will have the same effect on you? I don’t and yet, there I am writing comedy hoping that all my readers will reach the end with a big smile on their faces. And so far, it seems to be happening. […]
Writing And Food: How What You Eat Impacts Your Mood And Creativity
The holiday season is upon us. It brings food, family, and friends together for so many of us. But holidays can also be emotionally charged and triggering for several people. No matter which spectrum of emotions you might be experiencing, notice how humankind expresses both celebration and mourning through food! How often do we eat […]
Painless Editing in Easy Steps
For many authors, editing a book is their favourite part of the process. They enjoy crafting their rough first draft into the elegant book that they had in mind when they started to write, hanging flesh on the bare bones of the plot and transforming it from a series of scenes into a work of […]
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