Category: How To and Tips
Random Nuggets for Writerly Wranglings
I’m still a newish author, with much to learn, but I’ve picked up a few things in the last six years and four books, random nuggets for writers wherever they’re at in their writerly wranglings. Let me share! For the newbie writer– It’s great to have a fantastic scenario for your story, but your characters […]
How Today’s Savvy Schemers Are Scamming New Authors
ARE THE STARS OUT TONIGHT…OR JUST IN WRITERS’ EYES? By Christina Hamlett Less than 72 hours after my latest UK cozy mystery went on the market, an effusive greeting popped up in my email: “A LITTLE REVENGE IN ROBIN HOOD’S BAY is the best of the best in literary gems with its irresistible mix of […]
The Pest Complex: A Cautionary Tale For The Author Who’s Afraid To Ask
By Rachel Stone As far back as I recall, I’ve suffered from what I call the Pest Complex: a paralyzing fear of being a bother, asking for too much (or anything, ever), or taking someone else’s precious time. And friends, I have it bad. Server gets my order wrong? I say nothing. It’s good to try new […]
They Said What? Reader Reactions to The Marriage Debt
By Christina Consolino When I first began writing my latest novel, The Marriage Debt, I had women readers in mind. After all, the main topic—menopause—is a “normal” part of aging that affects many women. As I fleshed out Nika and her husband, Ethan, their relationship, Nika’s relationship with others, and how prevalent perimenopausal and menopausal […]
How to Find Your Publishing Path
By Camille Pagán On a recent group coaching call, one of my clients asked if there was a particular trait most successful novelists shared. I didn’t blink before answering: “Flexibility.” Like nearly all things in life, publishing changes. Algorithms, publishers, agents, editors, readers, and marketing methods aren’t static. To stay in this business—which is how […]
When Characters Choose You: Allowing Fictional Voices to Lead the Way
By Heather Frimmer I’ve always dreamt of being one of those authors who cultivates a never-ending list of ideas for their next novel—ideas popping into my head while commuting to work on the Merritt Parkway, shampooing my hair, or sniffing tomatoes in the produce section—but alas, I am not. A relentless self-editor, I won’t allow […]
When Grief Takes Everything
by Vanessa May How do you survive when grief appears to take everything from you? When I wrote my first book ‘Love Untethered: How to Live When Your Child Dies’, I thought the loss of my son was the worst thing that could ever happen to me. And I was right, it was, but little […]
Perspective Will Drive Your Story Forward
by Kathryn Craft “To expand the reader’s perspective is one of literature’s highest callings. Memoir would be pointless without it. Perspective pervades a journalist’s best quotes, energizes speeches, and makes history worth reading about.” I wrote those sentences in a handout for one of my earliest conference presentations, after noticing that my developmental editing clients […]
The Baby’s Cry, the Blank Page, and the Myth of the Writing Mother
By Caroline Lea I once tried to revise a sex scene while cooking dinner for my family. Reader, it was a disaster: the chicken was burned and had to be binned; the characters lost interest in each other. Everyone cried. In an ideal world, the mythical figure of the writing mother would also be an […]
The Writing of A Map of Her Own by Dede Montgomery
When I began this story, I thought it would be my fifth rather than sixth book. But as other authors know to happen, life interrupted. I did know that Celia, a character from my “novel in stories” Humanity’s Grace, had more in her. And maybe character Paul did too? This felt like my compulsion to […]
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