Where Normal Need Not Apply
This post originally ran several months ago at the Girls With Pens blog. It’s one of my favorites because I’m always looking for checklists to make sure I’m not missing anything while editing and revising. I hope you find it useful. Whether we plot our stories ahead of time or write […]
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As we head into “writing conference” season, I thought I’d revisit my post about how to write a pitch. This post originally ran several months ago, but the information never gets old. (In fact, I’ve used this to help myself write pitches lately.) Pitches fall into many categories, from loglines […]
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Recent events have brought fan fiction out of the hidden realm of über-fans and into mainstream media. For the first time, many authors are learning of the existence of fan fiction and wondering how it might affect them. Let’s take a look at what fan fiction is, what it means […]
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It’s tempting to put all our effort into a big debut or breakout book. It’s natural to want our work to make a big splash and gain attention. We might think that if we break out, we’ll have it made. But there’s a dark side to that approach, especially if […]
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We writers can be a strange lot. We live in our heads, we talk to imaginary characters, we rejoice when we think of horrible things to do to said characters, and we plot out perfect crimes, alien invasions, and the end of the world. But even beyond all that, writing affects our […]
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*Shh* Be very, very quiet. We’re hunting agents. (Sorry, with that picture, I couldn’t resist the Bugs Bunny reference. *smile*) Many—if not most—writers want to find an agent at some point in their writing career. Even in this age of self-publishing, writers still want agents to help them with foreign […]
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Did you see all the posts and tweets yesterday about the Random Acts of Kindness Blitz? (#RAOKBlitz on Twitter) Two very generous authors, Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, of The Bookshelf Muse blog wanted to kick off the release of their book, The Emotion Thesaurus, in a unique way. Just […]
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I love when I make my readers think. Even better is when they turn around and make me think even deeper about an issue. *smile* Yesterday, K.J. Pugh blogged about my last post (where I talked about cliffhangers and hooks) and brought up the issue of sequels I briefly mentioned. No, […]
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Pitches, queries, back cover copy, and full-length stories all have writing techniques in common. For one thing, they all need a strong opening. We talk about that being a “hook,” something that grabs the reader and pulls them forward to the next line, paragraph, and page. A similar approach works within […]
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I’m excited to share today’s guest post by author Roz Morris. After ghostwriting many bestselling books, Roz recently self-published My Memories of a Future Life, her first novel under her own name. Roz’s decision to self-publish came about partly because this novel doesn’t fit into normal genre boxes. However, even as […]
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