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By Lillian Duncan I thought I’d give my two cents worth of advice to new and/or unpublished writers today.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 …
Getting in Touch with Your Inner-Psychopath
by C. Kevin Thompson At the Academy of Achievement,1 Sue Grafton spoke to a group of college-age attendees, encouraging right-brainers in the crowd to consider a life in the Arts. As I listened to this presentation, I was struck by how similar writer’s lives are in so many ways. No matter how fledgling or how established, it seems all writers …
Top Ten Things I Learned about Business Success from Binging on Real Housewives
by Traci Tyne Hilton When I have a hard time getting words on the page, I don’t make the wisest decisions. That said, I’ve watched a lot of the Real Housewives of Everywhere this summer. And you know what? I’ve learned an awful lot about how to succeed in business! 10. Don’t be afraid to look foolish. The Real Housewives …
Trusting Your Gut
by Suzanne Woods Fisher A few years ago, I was staying in a nice hotel-very safe, oriented to business clientele. As I went into an elevator, a hotel employee came in behind me. He waited until I pressed a button for my floor, then he smiled, as if that was just the floor he needed. Something just didn’t seem right. …
Story Chasers: A Twelve-Step Program for Not Becoming a Successful Writer
by DiAnn Mills We fiction writers chase our stories like toddlers on a sugar-high. I’m one of them. I can dream and plan and plot all day long. Yet sometimes I get sidetracked. For writers who live and breathe their addiction but have a problem staying on task, I’m offering a twelve-step program call Story Chasers (SC). These are writers …
Stick with the Story
by Jill Elizabeth Nelson Any novelist who has spent much time in the fiction-writing world has probably heard the term “sagging middle.” Sags develop when a story loses momentum and begins to meander or bog down. I’m of the opinion that the issue usually isn’t so much a single sag as a number of sags, clustered or scattered throughout. Envision …