Category: How To and Tips
How Place Shapes Story
How Place Shapes Story Eudora Welty said, “One place comprehended can make us understand other places better.” She was onto something: where we live, the environments we navigate, inform who we are and how we understand the world. When writers create a fictional place, they create a force that likewise shapes their characters, whether it’s […]
Storytelling in the Round: A Family Lawyer’s Perspective
Storytelling in the Round: A Family Lawyer’s Perspective I practice family law, which means I’ve spent many hours and days in courtrooms listening, closely, to people tell different versions of the same events. Sometimes someone is objectively lying: no, Dad did not take the kid to the doctor’s, because the medical records show that Mom […]
Keep Writing Until They Are Forced to Say Yes
Keep Writing Until They Are Forced to Say Yes I got a late start as a writer. I was an avid reader, sure, but write a book? Never crossed my mind until I was in my 50s and had a story to tell. I’d never so much as taken a writing class, but one frozen […]
Generational Dynamics: Story DNA
Generational Dynamics: Story DNA There have been stretches in my creative life when family and career commitments demanded most of my available time and attention. At those moments I imagined my writing life as a river, sometimes ebbing and sometimes swelling, swirling around other demands and obligations—personal, professional, familial. But also like a river, always […]
A Writing Life: Ronna Wineberg
A Writing Life I’m a fiction writer and sometimes I’m asked about my writing life. The question has caused me to think about my writing process and what a writing life entails. My writing life consists of different parts: writing, submitting work, creating books, publicizing a new book, giving readings, building community, and reading literature. […]
Writing Likeable, but Difficult, Characters
Writing Likeable, but Difficult, Characters Emma Barry We’ve all seen the reviews that say, “The protagonist wasn’t likeable. Two stars.” But what does it mean for a character to be likeable? For me, it’s rooted in relatability. If a character is too perfect, they will likely feel aspirational. I might want to be them, but […]
On Writing The Accidental Series
The accidental series When readers asked about a follow-up to my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, I was surprised. Although I had thoughts about how my character, Diana, might have developed since 2004 when the novel is set, I didn’t plan to explore them in fiction. Savvy authorpreneurs know that you can sell more books […]
My Writing Process by Rebecca Heath
by Rebecca Heath One thing I love almost as much as reading a wonderful book and travelling along that journey with the author, is to read about how that book came to be. There is something so interesting about reading another author’s writing process, like seeing behind the curtain of a magic trick for a […]
From Nursing Home to Published Author
I’m told the average author doesn’t query publishers from a hospital bed in a nursing home. I’d like to think, then, that I’m not your average author, because that’s what I did in the summer of 2020. Since that time, I’ve had two novels published and a novella releasing at the end of May. Not […]
My Writing Journey by Hope Gibbs
My Writing Journey… By Hope Gibbs As a debut novelist at the age of fifty-one who had absolutely no experience before I produced a 95,000-word manuscript, I’m often asked a question. “Was it a dream of yours to become a writer?” and I reply, “Yes, since I was a little girl.” But it wasn’t books […]
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