By Michelle Arch In a world of tweeting, texting, chattering, status updates, desktop messaging, flash fiction, and the ubiquitous shrunken novel, rhetoric and the art of epic articulation, sadly, are no longer appreciated and extolled. Murky millennial jargon and cryptic acronyms have replaced the precision of entire phrases and sentences, leaving some of us to wonder if the writer is …
Research Surprises
by Susan Lyttek One of the first things I do when I get an idea for a story is research. I enjoy the process. More often than not, its results surprise me, taking the story in a different direction or changing the focus. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I often approach a book project with preconceived …
Motivation’s the Key
By Ane Mulligan Back on April 4th, I blogged about the 8 basic lies people believe. It can be as innocent as an ever-tired, exasperated mother wiping up yet another spilled glass of milk. “Can’t you do anything right?” If the recipient of that rebuke is under the age of five, he believes it. After all, that’s his mother who …
Perseverance
By Loretta Eidson To win a race requires planning ahead, seeking out appropriate training methods, pacing yourself, and pressing toward the goal. It takes an inner drive to jump the hurdles of daily obstacles in order to build muscle and stamina. The dream of winning is exciting. But let’s face it—not everyone looks forward to the time and effort it …
Mystery or Suspense – Which is it?
By Gail Gaymer Martin People often ask the difference between a mystery and a suspense, and writers will provide varying answers. Have you ever tried to identify the difference between suspense and mystery? It’s not easy. A mystery is suspenseful, and a suspense is often mysterious with obscure criminals and difficult to understand why. These two genre have things in …
Playing it Safe
Playing it Safe By Katherine Reay Working on my third manuscript seems to be an exercise in conquering fear. Someone told me that my second would be the most difficult, but now that it’s behind me – and it will be to you in October – this third one has me in knots. Now it maybe because the process is …
Define Success
By Jennifer Sienes I am not a published author. Let me repeat that-I am not a published author. Okay, technically, I suppose that’s not true. I’ve had some short stories and an article published. But since the majority of my time is spent on novel writing, that’s truly where my heart is. And it’s taken me quite some time (six …
My Two Cents Worth
By Lillian Duncan I thought I’d give my two cents worth of advice to new and/or unpublished writers today. So here goes: Practice! The only way to get better at something is to practice! I just read that it takes 10,000 hours to become proficient in a skill-any skill! That’s a lot of practice. And that means you must be …
Tripping Over Legos
By Cynthia Ruchti Novelists hope their proposals, contest submissions, and manuscripts elicit the response “This is no amateur!” and we want much more, of course, like how the piece moved the reader or editor or judge emotionally which is different for different people, and I’ll get to that later, but for now let’s take a look at how novelists can …
The Writer’s Life
by Henry McLaughlin The writing life is many things. It’s a calling, a mission, an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better. And it is all those things. But it’s something else as well: Writing is a JOB. Over the course of my life, I’ve worked several jobs. Many years were spent in state government trying to protect children. …