Kathleen West came to several of my online classes in the early days of writing her first novel.  She got structuring help and good fee...

When the book journey feels way too long and the end is nowhere in sight, I use this short but encouraging exercise to help me vision m...

I happen to love small pieces of books:  prologues, introductions, forewords, even epilogues, and epigraphs (those quotes or small thing...

One of my blog readers sent me a wonderful question last week.  It's a question that many writers struggle to answer.  It had come to...

Characters are it, in both fiction and memoir, if you want to publish.  Of course you have to have a good plot, something happening.  An...

In two weeks, on Friday, March 30, I'll be teaching an all-day workshop at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.  We'll exami...

Writing teachers and writing classes-- if you've worked with either, if you've shared your writing for feedback, you've prob...

A blog reader sent in this fascinating question: How can "event writers" develop stationary moments in their narrative and s...

Several of my private clients are completing their manuscripts this month, getting ready to pitch to agents at one of the large writing c...

They say it takes a lot of support to write a book--the process is long, hard, and personal for most writers.  We need encouraging words...