Category: How To and Tips
Awakening the Muse Through Meditation
Many of us know the nature of meditation is to sit and relax, focus on one’s breath, and clear the mind, but I’ve found meditation can do just the opposite for creativity. By that I don’t mean I meditate to stress out and create a web of random thoughts, but rather to open a calm […]
Writing With The Seasons
As an author of six books (two memoirs, three novels and a children’s chapter book, all written and published in the last ten years) I found writing fun and enjoyable. I never got my MFA or went to a writer’s critique group, but I always loved telling stories and it came easy to me until last […]
How Book Reviewing Influences My Writing
Before I published my books, and before I understood the importance of book reviews for an author, I always tried to leave a few sentences on Amazon and Goodreads about my reading experience. I’m a great believer in leaving (and reading) reviews for restaurants, holiday resorts, hotels, and other products, so why should books be […]
Letting The Story Open The Door
I love short stories. Reading them, writing them, choosing them for Literary Orphans, the online literary magazine I have the privilege to spend time with. In many ways, although I’ve written two novels and am half-way through a third, I feel that short stories will always be my home, and first love. The submitted pieces […]
Sticking with It
When my contemporary YA novel, Wesley James Ruined My Life, hits bookshelves next July I will be 42 years old. Forty-two is not old (at least, I like to think it’s not!), but it did take me a bit longer than some to land a book deal. There are examples of authors who hits it […]
Why Would You Do That? Understanding Motivation
We ask a lot of our characters. We put them in situations where they must create magic, find love, battle terrorists, win back their crowns, navigate secret space portals, solve murders, and everything else we can imagine as writers. We also ask our readers to invest their time and money on the adventures of these […]
Terrific Writing Books Written By Women
One truism of the writing life is that for us to evolve, we really must have a “lifetime learner” mindset, because no matter what our skills, there’s always more to learn, and more ways to grow. The truly successful writers are those who never stop applying themselves, not when they hit the bestseller lists, or […]
How To Hook Your Readers From The Start
Leave it to the French. Earlier this year La Prixe de la Page 112, a French literary prize inspired by a quote from a Woody Allen film, announced their shortlist. The winner? The best page 112, chosen by jury, of that year’s new French releases, the contention being that by page 112 the editor and […]
Courage, Take The Wheel
Starting Out I didn’t choose to be a writer. I think it’s that way with most writers; we emerge from the womb spinning stories and stringing together sentences. It’s something encoded in our DNA. When I was four years old, I wrote my first book, scribbled illegibly in dull pencil and bound with a stapler, […]
Three Things I Wish I’d Known as an Expectant Author
“Please keep in mind; this is just my first book.” This is what I began telling friends and family several months ago when I was still up to my eyeballs in anxiety and final edits of my memoir, Pieces of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters. I followed the announcement with a bunch of reasons why […]
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