Whoo boy, do I have a treat for you today. The lovely Melinda Collins recently returned from an Immersion Master Class with Margie Lawson, and she’s here today to share her experience. I’m playing this cool now, but it was a different story earlier. When I heard Melinda was going […]
Pin It
Read More
I’ve mentioned before that I love subtext. I’ve analyzed the Spiderman reboot for subtext. I’ve written about how to revise for subtext, how to use subtext in emotional scenes, and how character development happens in subtext. Yeah, I’m a tad obsessed with subtext. So when the fantastic Angela Ackerman of […]
Pin It
Read More
While I’m at the Romance Writers of America (RWA) Annual Conference this week, I’ve invited two authors who have recently debuted to share their insights. Today, I’m excited to introduce Tiffany Allee. Tiffany and I actually know each other in real life, as we belong to the same RWA chapter and I mooch […]
Pin It
Read More
Yay! I officially made it to the two-year mark on my blog. Two years of comments, questions, and debates. On my post announcing my Blogiversary Contest, we had enough comments to earn three winners! The worst part of the contest was picking the names. The worst, you say? No, that doesn’t mean […]
Pin It
Read More
When you first started writing, did you realize how much work it would take? Or were you like most of us, thinking that you’d written your share of emails, essays, or Christmas letters and that writing a whole story wouldn’t be—couldn’t be—that much harder? But at some point—maybe it’s when […]
Pin It
Read More
The last couple of posts have been about beta reading, beta readers, and authors helping each other. I love positive, uplifting conversations like that. But the comments brought up an important point: Sometimes the relationships we have with other writers in our circle aren’t all unicorns and rainbows. Sometimes a […]
Pin It
Read More
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 […]
Pin It
Read More
*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 […]
Pin It
Read More
We all have weaknesses. Some people want to deny their imperfections, but most of us do what we can to overcome them. Like many writers, one of my weaknesses is my inability to interpret my words the way a reader does. That’s not unusual. We know what we meant to […]
Pin It
Read More
No, that’s not a rhetorical or trick question. Recent events in the publishing industry have left me asking that as a serious point of confusion and discouragement. I know this is an ongoing complaint about the state of literature. Over a century ago, people complained about penny dreadfuls and dime novels, and […]
Pin It
Read More