Folks, I'm just finishing up a month-long workshop that has taken a lot of my time during the month of March, and now have space available for a few editing jobs during the month of April. Contact me if you're interested in having someone critique or edit your book. In the interest of time, I've… Continue reading Space Available for Editing & Tuesday’s Tweets – 03/28/2017
"Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish." John Jakes Honesty in writing is crucial. I don't think a writer of fiction can fake it and get away with it for long. But what, exactly do I mean by… Continue reading Honesty in Writing
"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master." ~Ernest Hemingway There's no end to the things we can learn about the craft of writing, no matter how many books we may have published, and the industry changes so much, so quickly, just trying to keep up can be a… Continue reading Sharing info on the business of writing
"One must be pitiless about this matter of 'mood.' In a sense, the writing will create the mood...I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing seemed worth enduring for another five minutes...and somehow the activity of writing changes… Continue reading Have You Fallen Into the Mood Trap?
I'm up to my eyeballs in books and manuscripts I'm judging for contests, which is great. There's nothing like contest season to reinforce the things you know as a writer and help you remember things you don't want to do in your own books. I want every book or manuscript I pick up to be a… Continue reading It’s All About the Reader
One of the most powerful things dialogue can be used for in our manuscripts is revealing character. The words a person uses and the way she chooses to phrase them says a lot about her as a person. From just a few lines of dialogue we can learn a lot about the person we're talking… Continue reading Dialogue: Doing Double Duty
After a hiatus, I'm bringing back one of the most popular parts of the Dancing on Coals workshop experience--the in-depth critique. Coming soon, I'll be starting a mentoring service and will once again be accepting complete manuscripts for critique. More details to come on both of those items. For the month of April I'm opening… Continue reading April Critique-a-Palooza!
I've spent the past 20 years writing in different genres, and I’m frequently asked how I do it. As the market grows and genres spawn sub-genres and sub-sub-genres, it’s become such a broad topic, I’m not sure anyone can actually cover the subject exhaustively. Several years ago, I asked the members of my longest continuous running… Continue reading Writing Across Genres
In my previous post about finding what’s wrong in your work, I said that I think writers need to understand the structure of a scene to identify what’s wrong with a scene. Another thing I strongly believe a writer needs is an unbending honesty with himself. This means you have to tell yourself the truth,… Continue reading An Unbending Honesty
We all know that creating is an art, but editing is absolutely a science. Unless you understand the tools of your craft, the scientific part of what we do as writers, I’m not sure a person can ever really identify what’s wrong with something they've written. A writer must know what should be happening in… Continue reading Identifying What’s Wrong In Your Work
Dancing on Coals 