Friday, December 13, 2019
Interiority? How Much Should You Show or Tell about Your Characters' Inner Lives?
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Interiority or "internals" is a fancy way to describe the reader's view into your characters' thoughts, feelings, and i...
Friday, December 6, 2019
Can You Use Real Place Names in Your Books? Can You Fictionalize Details?
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Maggie is writing a novel about a group of people living in a made-up place, based on a real location. She faced a dilemma this month ab...
Friday, November 22, 2019
Finding a Writing Group or Writing Partner--From Afar (Online and On Demand)
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Nikki, who travels a lot, took one of my writing workshops and recently emailed me with a great question: how do you find a writing grou...
Friday, November 15, 2019
Wisdom from the Irreverent Anne Lamott--on Writing and the Writer's Life
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We all need inspiration. Writing can be a solitary, even lonely, process, often discouraging. Thanks to my student Mary for this excellen...
Friday, November 8, 2019
Should You Pursue Your Manuscript--Or Set It Aside--After Multiple Rejections (AKA Who Are You Writing This For?)
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One of my students from Canada recently contacted me after the third small press rejected her memoir manuscript. The publisher was serious...
Friday, November 1, 2019
The Confusing World of Copyrights and Permissions--A Brief Overview for the New Author
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Although I don't recommend spending much time on the legal aspects of publishing until you are close to that long-awaited time, there a...
Friday, October 25, 2019
On Hooks and Other Excellent Ways to Start Your Story
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When I was shopping my first novel, Qualities of Light, to publishers, along with the rejections, I received an incredibly valuable pie...
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Four Favorite Tools to Organize Your Book Material--Before It Gets Overwhelming
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Beyond the book-writing process itself, the reason we all do this, there's the need to stay sane about the piles and files and folder...
Friday, October 11, 2019
Writing with Authenticity--Why It's Important to Foster a Unique Voice in Your Art
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Publishing is an interesting game. Like all business owners, some publishers are wary of risk. They want books that adhere to tried and t...
Friday, October 4, 2019
Organizing Your Book: How I Learned to Love Scrivener
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Books become unwieldy fast. Unlike a poem, essay, or short story, a book may generate thousands of pages by the time it's revised do...
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