Category: How To and Tips
How to Write the Perfect Ending
I’ve often felt that your first chapter is what sells your novel, but the ending is what sells you as an author. I’m not saying a rollicking start isn’t important—as are characters, voice, plot, and theme—but a great ending is what will leave your reader satisfied, enthusiastic, and wanting more. It’s certainly not easy. Endings […]
What’s Food Doing in Your Fiction?
I’m mildly obsessed with writing about food, both in memoir and in mystery, so I paid attention when a blogger recently complained about the preponderance of food scenes in fiction, warning authors to give those scenes tension and to make them advance the plot. It’s not bad advice, although I think it more important that authors […]
What I’ve Learnt As A Writer
I’ve just published my first novel—a romantic comedy called Mr. Right-Swipe (Grand Central Publishing). What I’ve learned in this process from new writer to published author probably isn’t all that groundbreaking; but I’ve been at this for a number of years—seven or eight of serious writing, to be exact—and I’ve come away with a lot […]
How To Deal With Non-Constructive Criticism
If you have been on the agent querying treadmill long enough to receive a request for a full manuscript, then you know the feeling: the simultaneous swell of pride and the utter fear of not measuring up. Your query letter worked, hooray! An actual expert from the publishing industry, with a slush pile as high […]
Unleash Your Creative Flair With Blue
Each of us has seven selves: self-preservation, self-gratification, self-definition, self-acceptance, self-expression, self-reflection, and self-knowledge. Writers tend to focus on self-expression. Each self is associated with—and influenced by—a color. Every color has a different wavelength and individual properties, both positive and negative. Color is simply energy; energy made visible. As human beings, color is the only […]
How Negative Things Influence Your Writing…
Nobody likes negativity. It may seem like some thrive on causing misery to everyone, including themselves, but it’s just not true, take it from me. I don’t like being unhappy. I don’t like it when people I love die, when people hurt me, when people bitch behind my back and I get to hear about […]
Make Like a Nun and Get Your Writing Habit On
What habit might that be, you ask? Is it: The habit of sitting down to write at the same time in the same location each and every day even though Spring is here and your hands would rather be digging in the dirt than pounding on the keys? The habit of editing a draft over […]
When Opportunity Knocks, Answer The Door
There’s only one secret to success, and it’s hardly a secret. When opportunity knocks, answer the door. You’d be surprised how many people don’t. They turn up the TV while glancing warily through the window, sighing in relief as opportunity moves on to another house. Here’s why it’s important not to do that. Every accomplishment, […]
Why We Should Share Our Stories
When querying agents for my first book, I often joked that I’d finally achieved my lifetime goal by writing an entire 120,000-word manuscript, and what they really wanted to see was a one-page synopsis, or a three-paragraph summary, or one gripping sentence, a poem, a song, even! But I never imagined that one day, post-publication, […]
Getting Past the Opening: Where to Start your Novel
We sit in front of the keyboard, poised, with an idea for a book spinning in our head, and find ourselves afraid to start. After all, we are aware we have one paragraph, or three at best, to capture the attention of the reader. What do we do? My friend and mentor, Elizabeth Searle, offered […]
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