Tag: writing tips
Common Writing Mistakes: A Beginner’s Course
Just starting out writing? Want to make sure your work shines enough to grow a career? Here are some tips. To Market to Market, and Why You Should Not Write For It I know, I know. You go to a bookstore or read the bestseller lists and it seems like every novel has the word […]
Eight Tips for Seeing Your Novel with “Fresh Eyes”
Reaching the end of a draft always feels like cause for celebration. A trip away or simply a punch in the air Breakfast Club style…however we get our kicks, we need to make the most of them. Because soon enough it’ll be time for the next draft and that can be a tough nut to […]
How Your Day Job Can Help Your Writing
I’m lucky to live in a writer’s city, full of writing friends. Every so often we meet, drink cheap wine, bounce ideas around, and complain about our day jobs. We apply together for writing fellowships, arts grants, writing sabbaticals, writing retreats. All in quest of the time to write that our jobs, just ruining everything, […]
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 […]
Pieces Of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters
“You should be glad you didn’t get your girls back yet,” a friend told me while we were in line at a coffee shop. “Your book will be that much better.” It was 1995, and I had just returned to Alaska from Greece after my first failed attempt to rescue my kidnapped daughters, taken by […]
Learning as I Go
I can’t begin any discussion of what I’ve learned about writing while writing without a disclaimer: I’ve learned things that work for me. Aside from a few college-level writing courses, the books I’ve read on writing, and what I’ve picked up from other authors at workshops and conventions, I am completely self-taught. And I’m constantly […]
Dialogue and Subtext: The Spoken and the Unspoken
Subtext is a key element in transforming blah serviceable dialogue into dazzling dialogue. Why? Because great, genuine sounding dialogue happens at two levels: what is spoken and what is unspoken. What is said and what is meant. Children, drunks, iconoclasts, and people with impaired social skills tend to say exactly what they mean all the […]
Q&A with Nancy Cleary, Founder, Designer, Chief Hand-Holder and Cheerleader at Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing is an award-winning independent press nestled on the Oregon coast in a tiny town called Deadwood. Nancy Cleary has spent over twenty-five years as a professional graphic designer and author branding expert. Wyatt-MacKenzie has published hundreds of products over the last 18 years with a special focus on mom writers. They traditionally publish […]
How To Build A Character
If you type ‘how to build a’ into Google, you’ll be given the options of shed, fence, house, website. (I don’t think it will be too long before ‘girl’ is added to the list due to Caitlin Moran cornering this part of the literary market.) All of these options give guidance on construction and the […]
Second Person: Why I Used You In My Novel
Second person address, “I-to-you,” is a fascinating and effective literary device, the most intimate point-of-view there is, but writers avoid it like a death knell. Most editors reject it. Not only that, it isn’t easy to pull off, especially in novel length stories. So why use it? Why have the narrator tell her story to […]
Recent Comments