by Tara Johnson I was recently asked to give an aspiring writer my best piece of writing advice. I could have told her to study the craft, told her the best blogs to follow, or given her a checklist of a thousand other steps to pursue her dream, but after much thought, I offered my best piece of advice: write …
The Joy of Research
by Kimberley Woodhouse Research. It’s a chore to some people and a delight to others. I happen to fall into the latter camp although I must admit that sometimes I get so sucked into it that I lose track of time. Or get obsessed with something that leads me to another fascinating tidbit that leads to an incredible fact that …
10 Myths about Marketing Your Book
By DiAnn Mills What’s stopping you from marketing your book? Indecision about the tools? Fear of failure or success? How to approach social media? Heard so many cons that you’re afraid? Now is the time to debunk the following 10 myths so you can be a marketing rock star. Myth #1: All I have to do is one thing: write …
Plot Twists: The Paralegal Chronicles
By Kathleen Y’Barbo Next year I will celebrate twenty years of being a published author. This year I surpassed the 90-book mark and reached more than two million copies in sales. Where have the years gone? When I sat down at my Canon StarWriter word processor, I had no idea that someday I would be looking back with a body …
What Is Your Hero Pursuing?
by Henry McLaughlin We’ve all heard story is about conflict and tension. And that is definitely true. Stories about happy people living in Happy Valley don’t excite readers. Frankly, they can be boring. The story becomes a story when something disrupts the status quo. As John LeCarré once said, “The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The …
Resolving Tension
By Sarah Hamaker As writers, we work with tension all the time—without tension, our stories would sag and our heroes and heroines would have very boring relationships. But this blog is about the tension we experience between what we want to work on and what we have to work on. For many of us, writing is not our fulltime job. …
Tips for Fighting the Dreaded Writer’s Block
By Amy Clipston Through the years I’ve found that my book projects fall into two categories—they either write themselves or writing them feels like having my teeth drilled. In other words, the characters either tell me the story or I push them through the story as if they were dead weight. My book Room on the Porch Swing, which releases …
What About Book Reviews?
By Nora St. Laurent A book review is a thoughtful discussion of a book’s content, style, strengths, value, limitations and recommendation for it (or not) for possible readers of a genre and/or subject. Here is an example of a possible compact review, “this book is a wild ride of adventure, romance and suspense. It would work well for a book …
Observations from a Writer
By Denise Hunter Most writers are observers by nature, aren’t we? We observe ourselves, we observe others, then we use what we observe in our writing. Like the other day. I was driving down the road alone and had to brake suddenly for a cat. What was my response to potential disaster? (Yeah, some people don’t consider a dead cat …
How to Write a Novel
By Henry McLaughlin When I’m introduced as a writer to a group of non-writers I get a wide range of reactions. Some look at me as if I’m from another planet. Others back away as if they might catch a strange disease. In my early days, one person asserted I couldn’t be a writer because I wasn’t published yet. Made …