WRITER CRAFT WEDNESDAY: The Essential Editing Checklist

Congratulations on having a finished draft of your manuscript. The next step is editing the manuscript to the best of your abilities before you hand it off to a crit partner or editor. This is the essential checklist to get you started. Search for an unpack the following words: Thinks, Knows,…

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Who Wants Some Horror For The Holidays?

Surprise! Fun Fact: I did not plan for ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A WEREWOLF to have a sequel. I wrote that book mostly out of rage against the Christmas countdowns and my least favorite season of the year. It was fun. It was cathartic. It was going to…

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WRITER CRAFT WEDNESDAY – Writer’s Block And How To Manage It

Originally this was written for Savvy Authors in 2013, and then Leslie brought it back November 16th because she was struggling with NaNo. Reading through it, I saw a few places where I could expand on ideas better, so here is the revised edition of Breaking Through Writer’s Block!  …

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Writing Is Hard

Writing is hard. Publishing is harder. There’s a bell curve. The weakest get weeded out early on. They talk about wanting to write, and the book they’ve always imagined, but never actually sit down to write. On the top end you lose the truly gifted. The delicate orchids of writer-dom…

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Writer Craft Wednesday – Draft by Draft: How Books Get Written

One of the first lessons a novelist learns is that writing a book is not like writing an essay in school. The dynamics are different. The time factors are different. The end results are different. The drafts are different. With an essay it’s common to finish a full draft of…

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