Sometimes we travel for my husband’s work, and although we all enjoy the thrill of the open road and the excitement of escaping housework and chores and the incessant arguments over who gets the comfortable armchairs, us or the cats, still— It’s always good to get home. What is it… Read more“6 Reasons Why Writing Is Coming Home”
Category: A Number of Things You Should Know
5 Things A Writer Always Overlooks
You know how you work so hard to get that first draft down on the page? How you sacrifice comfort, companionship and casual entertainment, family time, work time, leisure time, exercise, sleep, nutrition, freedom from toxins, sobriety, eventually your very sanity—all for the sake of that novel? Then you suffer… Read more“5 Things A Writer Always Overlooks”
8 Places to Find Inspiration
You know what’s hard? Sitting at your desk day in and day out, month after month, year after year, trying to come up with fresh and significant angles on life in an imaginary world. After awhile it seems like every character you create spends all their time flipping through random… Read more“8 Places to Find Inspiration”
21 Things You Writers Know that Non-Writers Don’t
What it’s like to be transported to a parallel universe of incandescent vision through your own small words. How it feels to unravel the mystery of all human endeavor into a web of light that pulses delicately in your hands. Everything about your main characters’ childhoods, which were so poignant… Read more“21 Things You Writers Know that Non-Writers Don’t”
13 Ways to Add Depth to Your Genre Novel
If you’ve got a love story, bring in a third party. If you’ve got a thriller, break their tools. If you’ve got sci fi, create unexpected social norms. If you’ve got a fantasy, make reality too hard to cope with. If you’ve got historical fiction, unearth facts no one from… Read more“13 Ways to Add Depth to Your Genre Novel”
15 Things Your Characters Should Never Do
He lifted his leg and fired. With a whoop and a cry, she shot it out the back. They bent to examine their special organs. He couldn’t believe he was alive—he touched himself with gratitude. She knew he’d never get at the secret she was sitting on. If he couldn’t… Read more“15 Things Your Characters Should Never Do”
4 Do’s & 4 Don’t’s for Writing Series Fiction
This one comes from Lyn South, who submitted her question to Victoria’s Advice Column, which I like to think of as Miss Lonelyhearts for the Word-Worn. DO Identify your protagonist(s) and their nemesis(es) clearly right up front in each book. Your reader wants to know who this series is about…. Read more“4 Do’s & 4 Don’t’s for Writing Series Fiction”
10 Lies Agents & Editors Tell You. And Why.
When I came home from a trip to Europe in 1994, I stayed with five friends living in a studio apartment in a bad part of San Francisco’s Mission District. We slept like sardines on the living room floor, and in the mornings I sat at the kitchen table with… Read more“10 Lies Agents & Editors Tell You. And Why.”
5 Things to Celebrate About Finishing Your First Draft
You didn’t know you had that many words in you. And no, they’re not all just variations on “and then.” They’re all possible variations on twenty-six simple little letters, higgledy-piggledy arrangements of sound and thought and meaning, and the images that leap out of them are a magic of physical… Read more“5 Things to Celebrate About Finishing Your First Draft”
13 Things You Should Have Known About Your Characters Beforehand
Are your heroine/hero and villain related? Closely? Are they, in fact, siblings or, maybe, parent & child? Because if they are, you’re going to have a lot of trouble explaining your idea of parenting. Do your characters care about the dilemma you’ve given them? Passionately? Desperately? Enough to carry both… Read more“13 Things You Should Have Known About Your Characters Beforehand”