Realtors know that location is everything in buying or selling property.  Try to sell a house that's near a busy highway or high te...

A small book came my way this month.  It's called The Art of Time in Fiction :  As Long as It Takes, by Joan Silbers.  Very short, ...

So many writers come to writing with a deep love for books.  They feel that love for books will make them able to write--almost magica...

Several years ago, I was browsing through a recent issue of The Writer's Chronicle, a wonderful publication from AWP.  AWP has been ...

Many years ago, when my books were first being published, I took a class on reading my writing aloud.  It was taught by a television a...

Plot is the most basic outer-story structure your book can have.  Fiction and memoir plots are all about action--what happens, where it...

Dialogue isn't easy to write well.  In fact, it is one of the red flags that editors use to spot an amateur writer.  Maybe it'...

Patricia has taken my online class and read my book, You Book Starts Here. She wrote me last week with a good question about how to prot...

The short-story writer, André Dubus, described writing as having vertical and horizontal moments. In an interview for the anthology, No...

I worked with a writer a few years ago, who was writing a fascinating story.  He'd been through serious medical trauma, and he wa...