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…
Voice is how your character (and you as the author) speak throughout a book. It’s part word choice and part personality with a dash of attention. Character Vocabulary + Character Personality + Character’s Interests +Authorial Voice = VOICE Vocabulary – each character has a different vocabulary. How much…
What do you need to have before you send out a query? THE BARE BONES Fiction – A finished, polished manuscript that is the best you can make it right now. A query letter. A full synopsis. Non-Fiction – A proposal and sample chapters of your work, a query letter,…
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! …
Tomorrow I’m doing something new. I’m taking a script writing class. It’s a brand new creative ocean to go swimming in, and I feel like a very tiny guppy who isn’t going to be able to complete with the lovely fish in California who have years of experience talking about…
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…
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…
It’s that time of year again! You know, the season of setting goals, making resolutions, and generally convincing yourself that this year will be different through the sheer force of your holiday-fueled determination. Everyone finds it easy to make goals when there’s a ton of enthusiasm and peer support for…
Author, novelist, writer… What’s the difference? Spelling, for the most part. I’ve never found a satisfactory definition to differentiate, although I tend to think of writers as non-fiction news people (a bias left over from my newspaper days). The real difference is between an Author and a Published/Contracted Author. When…
GENRE It’s a scary word for some people. I’ve met people who will argue genre until they are blue in the face. I have met people who think genre is a form of gate-keeping. I have met people who think genre is a waste of time. I have never met…