So, you want to write a book? Good for you! Maybe you’ve daydreamed about being a Real Author for years. Maybe you set a goal as a child to pen the next Great Novel. Maybe you have hazy, romantic ideas about what authors do (spoiler alert: we sit at our…
Listen. Every authors hits a stage in their book where they question everything, where they doubt themselves, where they want to give up. It happens because you are comparing a working draft to finished manuscripts again. Which is a bit like asking why apples on the tree don’t taste like…
This weekend I tried a new-to-me project and did a 3 Color painting of a wave. It’s an interesting technique that relies on blending primary colors (red/yellow/blue) to create all the other colors needed. I enjoy painting because 1) I honestly suck at visual art like drawing and painting and…
Start here with Derek Murphy’s wise words: The number of times I’ve wanted to punch someone for implying that artists ought to starve to create, that our lives and time aren’t worth more than pennies, is a number higher than zero but not a number so high that you…
It’s been said before by far more brilliant people than me, but there is a single key to success in any creative field: DON’T QUIT. The difference between every bestselling author and everyone out there who says they want to be those authors is one person hit that goal already…
I have another secret to share, come here. Closer… closer… STOP! Right there. Look around. Do you see everything around you? This, my friend, is the path to failure. This is where dreams are broken. This is where it all falls apart. We call it life, sometimes adulthood, but what…
… and no one knows what they are. Or so says the infamous quote seen on mugs and hats everywhere people want to make money off of frustrated authors. I’m not saying these are the missing three rules, but they’re my best guess for the time being. 1- Write it…
All writers are not created equal. Some are gifted at world building, others excel at pacing, some write witty dialog without breaking a sweat (looking at you, Whedon). Whatever your skill, you should identify it and make the most of it? Why? Let’s pretend that your greatest strength is dialog….
Critique groups abound, especially as NaNoWriMo wraps up. The crisp, cold weather of winter combined with the frenzy of writing a novel in a month spawns writing groups like there is no tomorrow. New writing groups are wonderful, but not all critique partners are created equal. The horror stories about…
Dialog choice, or the words your character uses to describe the world around them, is a major deal breaker for books. If all the characters sound the same they lose their individual personalities. One of the big places where you’ll see a variation in a shared language is in slang…