Pros and Cons of Joining a Writing Organization

Lori Twining ~ Butt in Chair

As most writers know, the success of a writer comes down to the amount of time your butt is planted firmly in the chair and you are writing something. Seriously, without the words, you can’t honestly call yourself a writer.

However, a writer also needs to step away from the keyboard (or the notebook) and venture outside of their solitary writing den and try something new. I highly recommend joining a writing organization, but I’ll be the first one to tell you that writing organizations are not for everyone. There are pros and cons that you should be aware of. Read more

New Year’s Resolutions For Weird & Wonderful Writers

Today is the last day of the year and we shouldn’t spend too much time crying about all the failed resolutions we didn’t follow through with over the past 364 days. Tonight at midnight will mark the moment of a fresh opportunity. We will have a clean slate for 2019. So, what can we do to make our new year as weird and wonderful as the unique souls that live within us?

I made a list of achievable goals specifically for writers ranging from quite simple to complicated tasks. You decide. I’m challenging you to pick one or two things off this list to push yourselves into becoming a happier creative person.

New Year’s Resolutions For Weird & Wonderful Writers:

Read more

Turning Leaves and Going Deeper with Andrew Pyper

Turning Leaves Writing Retreat ~ Writescape

There are so many ways for writers to invest in their future career as an author.

Ultimately, as a writer, it’s your meandering pathway to follow until you get published… However, what if there were a secret in jumpstarting your career and taking the express highway to publishing, eliminating the many wrong turns along the road?

Would you want to know this secret?

Of course you would… or you should. Read more

What If YOU Could Be The Reason…

 

Lori Twining ~ #SlaughterSquad

Sometimes, I feel like I have the power to make a difference. Does this ever happen to you? Are you harboring tiny pockets of power that could be used for something good?

What if YOU could be the reason someone smiled today?

What if YOU could make a small difference in someone else’s life?

What if I finished a novel, published it and it was because of YOU that it hit the New York Times Bestseller List? Read more

A Writer Caught in a Whirlwind of Authors

It has been exactly one week, since I returned from an eight-day stay in New York City for the Thrillerfest Writing Conference. While there, I not only had cocktails with famous authors, but I listened to them pour their hearts out trying to help aspiring writers make it through the solitude trenches to publication. My notebook is filled with over 60 pages of NEW hand-written information that I didn’t receive the past two years I have attended. How is it, I still have so much to learn?

Most of the information given at Thrillerfest is top secret to the writers who attend the conference, but just in case you are writing a thriller, suspense, mystery or crime novel, here are a few tidbits I can share with you: Read more

Snippets of Conflict at Mudtown Station

Ascribe Writers visiting Mudtown Station in Owen Sound

Storytellers know ALL the best pieces of a story are usually built around conflict. Sometimes it is hard to find or figure out what the conflict is.

Where does your story start?

Where does it end?

Both are difficult questions.

The easiest way to decide where your story should start is to assume you only have two minutes to tell the story. Two minutes is being generous, because EVERYONE at the table has a story they are dying to tell too, and they want to cut in and interrupt your exciting tale, so they can start on their own story. It’s a competitive world out there, so how do you compete? Read more

The Best Writer’s Birthday Gift

Every writer gets to celebrate one birthday every year. If you have a writer in your life, what do you get them?

Sure, writers love things like coffee, pens, highlighters, cake, wine, empty notebooks (cheap ones from the dollar store will do just fine), leather bound notebooks are awesome too (although most writers are afraid to write in them for fear of wrecking them), coffee, wine, dinner out somewhere, cake, coffee, maybe some more wine, definitely some more cake… but seriously, what is the one present a writer could receive, that would make them the happiest writer you know?

What is it? Read more

10 Great Reasons Why Writers Should Take an Online Writing Course

You already know how to write, so why should you take an online writing course?

Good question. Let me explain…

I became an empty-nester in September. All three kids are off living in three different cities, studying to become someone who can earn a living at something they enjoy for the rest of their lives (at least this is the plan). As for me, this means I should have oodles more time to finish that novel (or multiple novels) that I have on the go, right? There are no kids wandering around my kitchen begging to be fed at a certain time. I have a husband who enjoys cooking for me and he doesn’t mind throwing in a load of laundry or washing dishes, while I write.

What’s my problem then? Read more