One truism in writing that’s often repeated is “write what you know.” But that advice can be harmful—at least for fiction writing. I much prefer the advice: Write what you want to learn about. Being open to learning new things for our writing can enrich our lives—and be fun!
Pin It
Read More
Whether we publish indie or traditionally, we may want to start a company at some point in our writing career, either for our pen name or for a publishing imprint or author services business. Today, I’m excited to have Kathryn Goldman here to share with us the legal aspects of starting our own company.
Pin It
Read More
One technique for drafting or editing our stories into shape is using beat sheets, but it can be tricky to understand how to use them. Here’s a round-up beat sheet and story structure resources that might help us understand beat sheets.
Pin It
Read More
I’m a perfectionist, so I had to get over a lot of my own issues to be able to publish my stories. Many steps along our writing path can make us uncomfortable, as we’re not perfect, not ready. But I never would have been able to publish if I hadn’t pushed myself to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Pin It
Read More
Many authors continue to blog writing or publishing advice after publication. But just as many authors stop blogging about anything other than release news tidbits for readers once they’re published. Let’s explore how and why we might decide to change our blogging style.
Pin It
Read More
It’s been almost a week since my release of Unintended Guardian, and I’ve been getting lots of questions about how I made my decisions for what to do with my books. Let’s start at the beginning: How did I decide on my publishing path? For that, we have to go back to when I first started on my writing career path.
Pin It
Read More
A bit over a year ago, Beyoncé surprised the music world by secretly dropping a new album with zero promotion in advance. Can we apply this strategy to the publishing world? If we run a lot of promo pre-release, by the time we have buy links, will people think our book is old news?
Pin It
Read More
Many large, life-changing events can scare us—even terrify us. We might think, “It’s a good thing I didn’t know how hard it would be, or I might not have done it.” Sometimes writing or publishing can be terrifying, yet we have to move past our fears.
Pin It
Read More
I’ve added a page to my site to list my favorite writing craft and reference books. I’ve added several books that I thought of off the top of my head, but I know I’m forgetting a bunch too. So let me share the books I thought of, and let’s see what others have to add to the suggestions.
Pin It
Read More
Is a Catalyst the same thing as an Inciting Incident? (Answer: Yes.) How do I know? It’s not because there’s a secret cheat sheet with translations for every beat sheet term. *smile* If we know the functions beats fulfill in a story, we’ll always know where a story event belongs on a beat sheet.
Pin It
Read More