I’ve always said there are – to oversimplify it – two kinds of writers. There are architects and gardeners. The architects do blueprints before they drive the first nail, they design the entire house, where the pipes are running, and how many rooms there are going to be, how high the roof will be. But […]
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Villains, Part 2
Nothing creates suspense and fear like a potent, evil, will-take- prisoners villain. A good villain is the stuff of nightmares and will haunt the reader long after the story concludes. The best villains create genuine feelings of vulnerability in characters and readers. As in make your blood run cold. Here’s a round-up of tips for […]
Read the rest of this entry »Villains: Color them Dark and Dastardly, part 1
A liver-eating, Chianti-drinking cannibal.Let the games begin!
Read the rest of this entry »Advice from the brilliant Margaret Atwood
When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion, dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood.It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you’re telling it, to yourself or to someone else. ~ Margaret Atwood […]
Read the rest of this entry »Quick take: Skip the “took a”
Like many editors I’ve collected my own gaggle of words and phrases that I find annoying. I can become curmudgeonly if I spot certain words in a manuscript, especially when they’re abused and appear over and over. Now, I realize that taste and preference are highly subjective and chances are I might stand alone on […]
Read the rest of this entry »“As the pen rises from the page between words, so the walker’s feet rise and fall between paces, and as the deer continues to run as it bounds from the earth and the dolphin continues to swim even as it leaps again and again from the sea, so writing and wayfaring are continuous activities, a […]
Read the rest of this entry »Join us in Portland on February 20
For Write, Rewrite, Repeat It’s a one-day conference jammed, and I mean jammed, with insights, tactics and genius ideas you can you use to catapult your writing career into a higher gear and greater visibility. Keynote speaker is Fonda Lee. Martial artist, inventive author, whip-smart and savvy marketer. She’ll be talking about The Strategic Author. […]
Read the rest of this entry »And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can’t really share the enormity of our lives. ~Diane Ackerman
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