One of the first questions I ask students is; what do you remember most about your favorite books? I always know that at least 99 % are going to tell me about a character they fell in love with, cheered for, and turned the pages just to see what happened to them. Don’t get me wrong,…
Tag: authorship
Friday Ramblings From An Author-Always Proofread
This week I know what the person who first coined the term TGIF was thinking. This one’s even Friday the 13th. It seems like it’s a busy week and I’ve lost count on how many words I’ve written or read. Ever been so word fatiqued that you’re not sure if you’re spelling simple words like the and…
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Tell a non-writer you’re an author and the first question out of their mouth is usually, where do you get your ideas? Sometimes it’s a puzzle for writers too. What happens when the story idea bank runs dry? When I began writing, one major issue I had was one too many story ideas. They’d…
Friday Ramblings From An Author-Take It Slow Week
It seems like it’s been an odd week because it had a holiday sandwiched in the middle of it. I almost forgot that today was Friday. I spent a good part of the day outside working on upcoming projects. One of those is finally deciding what to do with a site I sort of…
Conflict and Emotion-Keys to A Great Story(and getting published)
Thank you for your submission but we’re sorry it’s not suitable for us… On my journey to becoming a published author, receiving letters with that opening line became a weekly event. Sometimes I’d sit down and cry while other times I’d just get angry. These are great characters I’d tell myself. Are all these…
Five Tips for Improving Your Synopsis
One thing lots of writers struggle with is writing a synopsis. It’s a necessary evil because most of the time it’s all publishers will let you submit. They base their first decision on how well you’ve done conveying your sometimes 70,000 plus word story into two or three pages. I’ve been teaching a class…
Monday Motivation-They Were Once Like Me
One day during my struggling writer years, I walked out to the mailbox and had not one, but three rejection letters sitting there. After opening them, and having a good cry, I thought about one thing. No writer begins their career (well, there might be a few lucky ones), with a yes on their…
Friday Ramblings From An Author-We Made it to 500!
I was going to say it’s so hot today that you could fry an egg on the sidewalk but that would be a cliche and I’m a writer and should be able to come up with something better. However, my mind’s a blank right now. Thank you to this week’s guest blogger. Many of…
Friday Ramblings From An Author-Finally Caught Up With Back Titles
The first Ramblings of the summer. I’m happy to say that I’ve finally caught up with all my back titles. I re-released the last of the batch yesterday. The next title I get rights back to is in October which gives me some breathing space and a chance to work on my mystery. Here’s a…
Readers First, Writers Second
It’s the first day of summer and I’ve already read the first book on this year’s books of summer. Many of you know I set aside twelve books each summer to read while the days are long and hot. I’ll reveal this year’s dozen very soon but the focus of this post is all…