Branding Like a Boss

Lori Twining Leave a comment

This month, my writing group has taken an interest in developing their author websites and all I could think of while they were discussing this topic was… “Please don’t look at mine as an example.”

Why?

Because I’m one of those authors that still hasn’t decided on how to brand myself. You look at my landing page on my website and you will have no clue as to what I write. This is because I’m prone to genre-hopping. This allows me to write anything I want, whenever I want. I like to be in control. I don’t want to be known for only one thing. Yesterday, I worked on Literary Fiction and today I worked on a Suspense-Thriller novel. Who knows what I’ll work on tomorrow?

What’s wrong with that? Read more

No End In Sight

Kelly Babcock Leave a comment
dead end sign
This better end well!

So, I’m more than half way through writing the novel I’m currently working on, and I’ve hit a snag.

My characters have all gotten lazy.

They’re doing nothing. They’re talking about what’s happened so far, and they’re going through the motions of their day to day lives, but they’re not moving my plot ahead in any visible way.

And I’ve gotten bored with them.

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A Tale of Two Books

Seana Moorhead 1 Comment

I recently read two similar books.

Both were fantasy set in imagined worlds.

Both used two different points of views to tell the story.

After stripping away the details, both had similar plotlines in broad strokes (protagonists chased / hunted by bad guys).

Both were decently written.

But one was more compelling than the other.

One grabbed my attention from the first paragraphs and pulled me like a tidal wave, forcing me to read late into the night to finish it. The other took more time before being captured by the pages.

Although I enjoyed the latter book, its first chapter didn’t entice me in the same way as the other. For the former, the first page hooked me.

As a writer I wanted to know what made the difference between these two books.

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To Quit or Not to Quit Writing

Donna Judy Curtin 1 Comment

Life is Busy

We all have commitments that fill up our day, our calendar and our thoughts.

At times, it seems as though my life and the choices I have made are overtaking my ability to continue to decide how I want to spend my day.

There comes a point where we need to clean house and decide what must stay on our ‘to do’ list, however, lately it seems the things that tend to get kicked off my plate are things I actually want to do.

So there goes writing time

Time to give up. Toss in the towel. Zip up the heart and close the computer screen.

If you know me at all, I can already imagine you shaking your head and mumbling,

“What’s the catch?”

Allow me to digress, one last time, into storytelling, because as I’ve stated, I’m quitting this writing thing. Read more

Humility and the Writer

Tracey Richardson Leave a comment

Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble
When you’re perfect in every way
— from the song, “It’s Hard to be Humble”

You would think writers are the humblest people around.

They’ve become practiced at it from writing mountains and mountains of words, only for many if not all of those words never to see the light of day in the form of being published. Writers get used to rejections and criticism—from publishers, editors, reviewers, awards or contest judges, readers and even other writers.

With all that adversity, the writer’s ego should be in tatters, paralyzing him or her from writing another single word. And yet that’s hardly the case. Writers are some of the most resilient, tenacious people I know (they have to be if they want to continue doing what they love). Writers are also some of the most stubbornly egotistical people too. Read more

Routine and the Writer’s Life: How my journal saves me every time.

Diane Ferguson 4 Comments

Do you journal? I do. I first learned to write by reading Natalie Golberg’s, Writing Down the Bones and utilizing her method of free writing. Not long after was Julia Cameron’s, The Artist’s Way, and her practice of writing three pages every day. These were my beginning teachers and these are the lessons that still keep me connected to writing even in the most hectic times and some of my hardest times.

This summer we’ve been under renovations and on a mission to clean out old junk and papers. This has been a long-time coming, but a deck and bathroom project gave us the impetus to hire a bin for a week. So we spent our August long-weekend digging out our basement to fill the remaining space with anything ready to go.

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