Category: How To and Tips
Don’t Forget to be Brave
Don’t Forget to be Brave Carmen Amato Scorpions loved our house in Central America. Tails curled with spiky malice and clad in brown armor, they made soft rustling sounds as they scuttled along the tile floor in search of shoes and draperies and other unexpected hiding places. Our housekeeper, whom I’ll call Doris, called my […]
Writing Action-Adventure for Women By Kerry Chaput
Writing Action-Adventure for Women By Kerry Chaput Unexpected female main characters have always held a particular fascination for me. I recently watched Enola Holmes with my daughters, and it fed my soul to see a young woman as a smart, resourceful fighter. and not a helpless creature incapable of saving others. Women can be fierce, […]
Surviving the Long Haul: Negotiating the Challenges of Traditional Publication
Surviving the Long Haul: Negotiating the Challenges of Traditional Publication Someone I know converted traditional publication into a bingo as a joke, and posted it on our author group. It was for our amusement, but the laughs mostly came from the fact that all of us had been in one of those situations at some […]
The Writing on the Wall
The Writing on the Wall One writer’s off-road trek from tiny opus to published novel Some people know exactly what they want to be when they grow up. Not me. I wanted to be a jockey (too tall). A singer (stage fright and no musical aptitude). And an astronomer (let’s be real, the stars are […]
The Psychology of Personality – Bringing your Characters to Life
The Psychology of Personality – Bringing your Characters to Life When you meet someone for the first time you may notice certain things about them: how they look, how they speak, what they say. These are the things we see and hear that tell us something about the person and help us form an impression […]
Dana Goldstein: On Writing Memoir
On Writing Memoir Dana Goldstein The darkness is welcoming. The silence is broken by the ticking of the grandfather clock as the pendulum swings and by the dog snoring softly at my feet. It’s 5AM. I make a coffee, put on my frayed and faded hoodie, then settle in on the living room couch, laptop […]
A Palm Reader, A Dream, And Standing Naked
On a whim, I’d hired a palm reader as part of the evening’s joint birthday celebration for my husband and me. When she arrived, prim as a Midwest librarian, I lead her to the quiet seclusion of my bedroom which afforded her privacy. A line quickly formed outside the room. Barbie waited next to Lou […]
Kay A. Oliver: On Writing
The art of writing has always been a passion of mine as far back as I can remember. In the sixth grade I entered a speech contest at my elementary school. However, I only won second place because the teachers believed that my parents wrote the speech for me. That could not be further from […]
Libraries are Training Grounds for Writers by Kimberly G. Giarratano
Libraries are training grounds for writers by Kimberly G. Giarratano My publishing journey started alongside my librarian career. After five years of teaching in New Jersey public schools, I was burnt out. I loved my students, but hated the politics, so I got a master’s degree in library science, thinking I’d work in an archive […]
Writing When Hurt, Writing To Heal
Priscilla Paton It could have been the ideal conditions for writing non-stop: no running of errands with necessities delivered to the door, no interruption by visitors, no annoying events, simply solitude at home. For me and many others, however, the COVID pandemic shutdown didn’t work out that way. It was like a bad first draft […]
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