Category: on writing

A Writer Caught in a Whirlwind of Authors

Lori Twining 2 Comments

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

Comma Conundrum

Diane Ferguson Leave a comment

Having just celebrated a birthday, it’s hard not to forget I’m getting older—maybe even, “over the hill”. And I’m doing okay with that. I have no urge to be young again even though I have great memories. While I don’t need to keep up with the latest trends in fashion, I do need to keep up with writing trends. I don’t want my writing to seem out-dated.  If age gives us one thing, surely it’s a bit of life wisdom we might impart on our fellow humans, or at least an interesting perspective. Read more

Summertime And The Livin’ Is…Easy?

Tracey Richardson Leave a comment

I hear constantly from fellow writers that they have trouble carving out time to write. Or they have the time, but they’re often swamped by writer’s block.

I seem to be the opposite. I have lots of time (in theory at least) to write and I rarely have writer’s block (too many years of being a writer, both as a newspaper journalist and as a published author, have mostly inoculated me against this).

At the moment, I’m trying to give myself a writing break, mostly because the timing is perfect. I handed in my latest manuscript to my publisher in late May and there’s no rush to start another novel. I busied myself this spring with a sizable freelance writing project and other paid work. Summer is here now and, well, that’s the perfect time to kick back and enjoy, right? Read more

Snippets of Conflict at Mudtown Station

Lori Twining Leave a comment
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

A Few Fun Language Facts

Bernice Connell Leave a comment

It’s time for a little spring cleaning in the writing department; a bit of a re-boot with the goal of improving clarity, succinctness and impact in what I write. Along with some answers to the proper use of seemingly similar words such as though and although, I’ve discovered a few, new-to-me, rules of the English language.

Recently I came across “The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase” by Mark Forsyth. He explains that adjectives in English ABSOLUTELY have to be in this order: opinion – size – age – shape – colour – origin – material – purpose, noun. So, you can have a lovely, little, old, rectangular, green, French, silver, whittling knife. He warns that if you mess with that word order in the slightest, you’ll sound like a maniac. The order seems somewhat instinctual but I haven’t put it to the test with my own writing yet. I do know that ‘brown, lazy, dog’ doesn’t sound right and that, as size comes before colour, a green, great, dragon can’t exist. Read more

Breaking your Writing Resolutions

Diane Ferguson Leave a comment

Writing Resolutions

We just passed Beltane Day, May 1st, the mid-day between spring and summer. Time for some Beltane writing resolutions. They say most New Year’s resolutions are broken by January 12th. I’m happy to say I lasted a lot longer than that with my New Year’s writing resolutions. (We won’t talk about the other non-writing resolutions.) But I still fell short of my goal to have the first draft of my re-written novel done by the end of March. What happened? Read more

Embrace Adversity

Kelly Babcock Leave a comment
old man
Embracing adversity ~ ©2013 Elaine Doy

Think about the people you know.

Think about the ones you like. Think especially about the ones you like whom you might not think you would be so fond of if you read about them in a book.

There are people in this world that you might not agree with, might not even approve of, but you find yourself liking them in spite of yourself.

Now ask yourself, why?

The odds are that you can’t put your finger on the answer. One of my favourite people was also a Read more