Category: How To and Tips
Characters and Craft – Learning To Leave Yourself Behind
Literary fiction is a strange, yet compelling animal. So much emphasis on language, rhythm, imagery. And let’s not forget character. Some novels are all about the character and the mad world behind her eyes. When I started writing fiction, my characters had a bad habit of sounding a lot like me. Sadly, they suffered from […]
Rea Frey On Becoming A Writer
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I ask my daughter this loaded (and wholly unfair) question. She studies me with her missing front tooth. The new one pushes through slick pink gums like a slice of bread easing out of a toaster. “Happy,” she says. My mom heart swells while my […]
Believe in Happy Ever After: Author Branding is More Than Genre
Believe in Happy Ever After: Author Branding is More Than Genre Believe in Happy Ever After. This is the tag line that appears in the header of my author website and a lot of people ask me why. It took quite some time to come up with an appropriate tag line, a sentence or phrase, […]
From Facebook Posts and Grocery Lists to Book
What does a Facebook-posting, grocery-list-writing mom of seven do when a story pops into her head—for the first time in her life? She writes it down. And when the next story pops into her head, she writes that one down, too. The next thing she knows, she’s on a journey to publishing her first book. […]
Retirement and Writing
The thought of retirement is an anxious and exciting proposition. The end of a career can leave us wondering who we are and who we will become without our job description. Visions of unscheduled and endless expanses of time offer contradictory images of boredom and fulfillment. What will we do to fill the hours that […]
Jumpstart Your Writing
There are some writers who don’t actually believe in writer’s block. Or maybe they call it other names like “procrastination” or “writers’ stall.” But as both a writer of sixteen novels and a clinical psychologist, I know it lurks in the minds of most of us. I’d like to offer a few suggestions for moving […]
Take Up Some Room, and Other Public Speaking Tips for Women Writers
Public speaking is a part of every author’s platform for promoting books. I’m always cautious about painting any group with the broad brush—most especially when it comes to culture or gender. Still, one pattern has stared me in the face across the decades of coaching hundreds of public speaking students. In greater numbers than their […]
Writing Process, Routine, and Craft
Writing is craft as much as it is art. Without the strong support of a good practice, it is very hard to create good work – at least, this is what I have found with my writing. Without a strong routine, my work is haphazard and frustrating and I fall into all the bad habits, […]
Seven Ways To Become A Better Writer
Somewhere along the way to becoming a novelist, I sidestepped the whole getting-a-formal-education thing that usually paves the path to traditional literary publication. It wasn’t an intentional decision; I had published a number of children’s picture books and arrived at a point in my career where I was ready to pitch an adult novel to […]
The Book in the Drawer, or Writing About Your Family Members
I started my first novel by accident. I was on the phone with my mother at the time—and to keep myself sane while I talked to her, I idly started typing what she was saying in her animated, breathy, giddy voice. She had just that day decided to get married again! To a man she […]
Recent Comments