Research for the Fiction Writer

As an agricultural journalist (my full-time writing gig), I am researching all of the time. It’s actually one of the first steps I take when laying out a new piece and I truly enjoy the process. I sometimes even pretend to be a sleuth-solving detective who can’t rest until she finds the exact piece of information she’s looking for. The harder the better; I like a challenge.

That being said, I don’t have a tonne of experience researching as a fiction writer so when I was up to host the May 2017 Ascribe Writers meeting, I chose to do a little more digging on the topic.

Here’s what I found. Read more

Memoir and Writing about Family

Two angry women by Sonyo Estavillo

I began to write a memoir years ago, but found myself struggling and put the project away. Whenever I wrestled internally with thoughts and feelings, I would get the project out and add to it, thinking this was the stuff I needed to write down, scenes and all the drama involved that always made life – and books – so interesting. As a matter of fact, it was how I started writing to begin with! Read more

Selfish Mom Rubs Elbows With the Masters

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women who are moms, who want to be moms and who refuse to be moms. Yesterday was a day for love, as we all have or had an amazing woman as a mother, and we all should’ve celebrated with cake, while we remembered the love they shared with us.

This year for Mother’s Day, I was a selfish mom.

I bought myself a present. One I didn’t want to share with anyone, but me:

Alone time, away from the family to do this… Read more

Creating My Author Website; With Abby

I’ve been crafting this blog in my mind for weeks and then today, my blog was hijacked by Abby.

I had it all planned out. I completed my research, aligned my information points and was prepared to deliver you the hard facts on creating the perfect author website. I had a series of blogs planned in order to share my experience as a writer, who, in denial of the times, was holding to the statement that I didn’t need a website. I would chronical how I finally caved to logic and I was going to use my blog to share what I’ve learned and will learn through this adventure so that other authors may embark on creating their own website. Read more

Imperfect Perfection

I recently finished a great book featuring a character I just love. The writer of this character has made a lot of money from a successful series of books centred around this one persona. After discussing it with some friends, I realized one of the things that made the story so readable was that the protagonist was believable. And what made her believable?

She wasn’t perfect. Read more

Resistance Training in Writing

Every word I’ve written has taken the slaying of a dragon to get to the page. The dragon is my resistance to writing that rears its ugly head each and every time I try to fool myself that I can write, or that I should write instead of the multitude of other tasks that lie undone. I don’t know what it’s like for other writers, how many face this resistance, but I know there’s a few of us.

I’m always left asking myself, Why do I want to do this if my inner self is always shouting, No? What makes me wake up at an ungodly hour, or shun social events, phone calls; so I can write, push against this resistance? If only I was at the gym, I’d be looking great by now. Read more

Under the Influence

Under the Influence of Nick Petrie ~ Photo by Lori Twining

As writers, our job is to create stories. Unique stories. It doesn’t matter whether they take shape inside poems, short stories or novels, because either way, we are still developing distinctive characters and a plotline. We are telling a story from beginning to end. The question is, how do you come up with the uniqueness of the story, when there are already billions of stories in existence. How will your story stand out from the rest? It may not be that unique after all. Or is it? Read more