Category: How To and Tips
Writing And Bad Habits
My Twitter biography reads “seriously trying to avoid caffeine and adverbs; succeeding in neither”. Over the years I’ve tried most tactics to motivate and fuel myself to write. Back in 2005, when I was writing the first draft of what became my coming-of-age novel What a Way to Go, I went on a one-week writing […]
The Why Of Writing
With the release of my second novel, Light of the Northern Dancers, I am increasingly asked by those finding the vocation self-indulgent, “Why DOES anyone write?” Those putting their fingers to a keyboard 5-10 hours a day understand. Those who don’t, perhaps never will unless they recognize the role stories play in humanity’s survival. Ultimately, […]
How to Write Your First Fiction Novel for Adults
It’s a dream so many of us share: walking into a bookshop and seeing your face staring back at you from the jacket of your very first novel. You love reading, you’re not afraid of a challenge; you’re ready to start your first fiction novel. Now what? Having just had the paperback of my first […]
Memoir: You Gotta Feel to Heal
If you want to gain 20+ pounds, lose all worldly ambition, have drinking dreams after 33 years of sobriety, and hermit away with no interest in dating—except for the nights when you venture to the movies and spend the evening with a tub of buttered popcorn—then memoir may be the genre for you. I was […]
The Integrity Advantage
I couldn’t believe I was back there again! It had been years since I found myself doing laps around the kitchen compulsively looking for the next bit of comfort food to stuff in my mouth. It had been ten years since that desire to binge swept over me like a tsunami. Actually, it had been […]
Preparing For National Novel Writing Month- And Why Do It
Why would a professional writer jump into the deep end of this annual novel-writing marathon, and commit to writing 50,000 words (or any number of writing hours) in a month? I can give you three reasons it turned out to be a blessing for me, when I did it in November 2016. NaNoWriMo: Sharpened my […]
6 Months After Publishing…
EDEN turns 6 months old on November 2. After experiencing a dream come to life on my May 2 “pub day”, I had never understood that’s also when the meter started running on my book’s relevance. Thirty or sixty days out and bookstores take books off displays and shelves; downright cantankerous with the suggestion of […]
A Heroine’s Journey: Writing Through the Dark Tangle
One thing that all writers can agree on is that we are fascinated with the surface of things, or rather, with picking away the veneer from the surface of things. That invisible gauze between thought and process, where all the what ifs wait for us to discover them. To decode. To create story, the stuff […]
Why Writers Feel Guilty and How to Overcome It
Why should we feel guilty for taking time to write? After all, it’s a passion for many of us, and for some, a way to make a living. We don’t feel like things are “right” in our worlds if we’re not writing, so why on Earth would we ever feel guilty for doing something that’s […]
Your First Book Is Being Launched! You Better Do This!
After a long, tortuous, 520 days on submission, my debut novel, What The Valley Knows, will be published by Black Rose Writing in early 2018. It feels like I’ve won the lottery. This is it—my chance to break through, to turn my dreams into a reality—to be a working author. Please don’t let me mess […]
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