Category: How To and Tips
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’ […]
Keeping Promises to Ourselves and Getting to the Finish Line—- and Beyond
By Lynne Shaner I started writing what would become my debut novel more than ten years ago. The first draft was messy and awful and all over the place, in the way firsts drafts are (mine, anyway). I printed it out it and boxed it up and lugged it halfway across the country. I tucked […]
On The Inspiration for Violet is Blue by Anne Shaw Heinrich
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I understood the gravity of a bounced check. Once I figured out that a checkbook was only as good as my rapidly fluctuating account balance at the bank, the act of writing a check to pay for anything felt like risky business. A bounced check can represent […]
Snark Comes to Spark by Ellen Notbohm
As I wake this morning after another night of badly broken sleep, I see my pencils sitting there on the nightstand in the half-light, their points dulled from the last time I used them. Which was—when? My weary thought is, I can’t write this morning. My pencils are dull. My pencils are pointless, literally and figuratively. […]
Try it, You Might Like it: 5 Reasons to Write Micro Fiction
A micro fiction challenge might be the most fun you can have while improving your writing If you’d told me a few years ago that a micro fiction challenge would change my mind about writing super short stories, I probably would have scoffed. Because writing short is hard (and writing short and well is even […]
Writing Sea Change: How a Girl Who Hated Science Became a Science Fiction Author
By Susan Fletcher My mother was a chemist. Back in the 1940s, she did some of the first research on smog in the Los Angeles basin. One of my sisters is a mathematician and computer scientist; my other sister is a physical therapist. My sister-in-law runs a biochemistry lab at Stanford, and my daughter has […]
My Journey as a Poet: Yewande Adenike Akinse
In 2009, I found myself standing at the threshold of a new chapter, a first-year student at the University of Lagos, Nigeria where the air was thick with the scent of possibility. It was here, amidst the vibrant chaos of campus life, that I first dipped my toes into the vast ocean of poetry. I […]
The Healing Power of Romance Novels, And How Writing One Has Healed Me
There’s a kind of magic that happens when you crack open the pages of a romance novel. The world shifts. Suddenly, possibility blooms where there was once doubt. You find yourself tangled in stories of second chances, of guarded hearts slowly unlocking, of broken pieces mending in the light of unconditional love. For so many […]
A Second Book about a Second Sister by a Second Daughter
By Catherine Matthews In preparation for writing my second novel, Roadside Sisters, I brushed up on the common characteristics of siblings by birth order. While certainly not preordained or immutable, there is some validity to the theories and logical reasons they play out in the way they do. I, like the character Molly, am a […]
The Conjuring Trick
By Ginny Fite A few weeks ago, a long-time writing critique partner announced there was “a lot of telling” in my latest manuscript. Oh, dagger to my heart. He sweetened his assessment by saying, “There’s a lot of showing, but there’s too much telling.” If you’re new to writing fiction, the distinction between telling and […]
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