Line by Line: How to Rewrite, Rework & Reword taught by Jessica Morrell November 10, 9-5 Tabor Space, 5441 S.E. Belmont, Portland, OR Cost: $75 Every good writer is also an editor. The tough thing about self-editing is learning what to keep, what to lose, and what to leave well enough alone. This workshop will […]

If you’re going to make it as a writer, you probably won’t be able to read mediocre or lousy writing. Now, reading is a subjective experience. Thus, what one reader finds mediocre another finds dazzling. If you’re serious about writing and publishing, you’re aware that a lot of mediocre gets published, and a lot of […]

October 20, 9-5 Manzanita, Oregon, The Center for Contemplative Arts Cost: $80 The task of a novelist or memoirist is to tell a story so riveting that it will hold a reader’s attention for hundreds of pages. This requires intimate knowledge of characters, their inner lives, and central dilemma. It also requires an understanding of […]

©Jessica P. Morrell A poem is a way of life. Eloise Klein Healey         Writers are given myriads of advice: how to plunge into the deep water of writing; how to craft beautiful sentences; how fiction or film structure holds a story together; how voice must be distinctive; how in all writing every word counts. […]

Bitter truth # 5: Don’t pop that champagne cork too soon. Just because you finished writing a book doesn’t mean it’s done. In fact, the real work of writing might just begin. Writing is rewriting, my friends. Fixing the pacing, tweaking the character arcs, scrutinizing the manuscript scene by scene, line by line, making sure […]

Jessica P. Morrell© “A strongly motivated need or desire sets in motion actions and revelations that return to dramatically affect a character, resulting in the final cry from Henry James’ The Wings of the Dove: “We will never again be as we were!” The plot has worked from disorder to order, from an unstable situation […]

Bitter Truth: the publishing world is not a fair playing field. At some point in childhood most kids learn that life is often not fair. No matter how that realization comes about, when that lesson is learned, it’s rarely learned through observation, but rather experience. Perhaps you were a major acting talent in 10th grade, […]