Pitch your ENTIRE novel, series, whatever in ONE sentence. Yes, it CAN be done. It can be done and it MUST be done, especially for those who want to be PAID to write. If you want to make income from your ideas/writing, you must master the pitch. Why? First, a great log-line (pitch) can help Read more

Change is part of life. Anything that is living, should be growing (or even healing) which means it changes. Only dead things remain the same. This is true with people as well as industries. Last post, we talked about the darkest moment, what it is and why it is so critical to story. It is Read more

Darkest moment is a term you’ll hear a lot, especially when learning how to plot. Last post, we discussed how critical normal world is for hooking the reading audience early, then never letting go until THE END. Every piece of the “plot” serves a critical function and understanding that function, I feel, makes us better Read more

The beginning of any story is, by far, the hardest part. Well, except for that sticky middle pain in the @$$ ACT TWO that goes on FOREVER. Total nightmare not getting stalled there. Then, we need to make sure to knock it out of the park at the END lest readers curse our names for Read more

“Real” writers (and critics) know a lot of things, but one thing they know is genre. And whatever genre you’re writing—for the record—it is probably stupid. Last post, I made a joke about what makes us “real writers,” which is a notion that has cracked me up for at least fifteen years. Writing, for some Read more

Aspiring writers. There are so many out there. MILLIONS! BILLIONS (if we count bots). I just returned home from the Idaho Writer’s Guild Conference, where there were rooms and rooms full of aspiring writers. Since y’all weren’t there, now it is your turn. I want anyone who refers to themselves as an aspiring writer to Read more

Rejection can be so devastating, that the emotional impact registers the same as physical pain. Think about that for a moment. Our brain cannot tell the difference between losing a job and getting hit with a bat. In fact, for those of you out there who’ve ever been fired spectacularly (too)? You might even prefer Read more

Ah, Valentine’s Day. Fifteen years ago—before I met my incredible husband—was a really rough time for me in the ways of love. I was in my mid-thirties, always the bridesmaid and never the bride. At least three prior engagements hadn’t “worked out” and my family found it funny to call me “The Runaway Bride” because—to Read more

The HERO. We’ve all grown up with heroes real and imagined and, though all “grown up” we still can’t get enough of them. Heroes come in all forms, and we find them all along the continuum from the idealist goody-goody to the brooding/shady anti-hero. Which begs the question. How do we transform our MC (main Read more

Oddly enough, there has been quite a debate over on Twitter about what we think about a writer who doesn’t read. In fact, going a bit further, the person who posted the Stephen King quote (below) mentioned she’d even seen blogs via new writers who openly claim they don’t read/don’t like reading. Before we get Read more