Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
Some say there is only one story ever written. It’s rearranged, maybe some parts are omitted, some may dominate, but in the end it’s always the same. You can throw in a few best friends, a love interest, a unique setting, but it’s still the same story. According to American scholar Joseph Campbell, this pattern …
Continue reading “OH! SAVE ME! SAVE ME! The Hero Model”
I’ve always felt the call of the wild, that deep magnetic draw to be outside. The feeling stuck with me even after bad times, days when Mother Nature let me know she held all the cards. Like when I lost my footing while backpacking and tumbled down an embankment, or when a Tarantula Hawk sting …
Continue reading “The Call of the Wild and How Writers Respond.”
Let me start by saying this is not a rant. No, it’s rather an earnest endeavor to help us all get to grips with our insanity. In some of us it’s stark and raving, in others it’s a mild form of disorientation. Both can be managed, if not cured. I should add that the …
Continue reading “Writing Disorders and What to Do About Them”
If you’re a visual person, Outlining Method #3 is for you! I call it The Wall of Sticky Notes, because that’s how I build it. Others create a Corkboard of Cards. In the business of screenwriting, it’s simply called “The Board.” As you can see, it has four lines: Act I, Act II part one, …
Continue reading “Outlining – Method 3: The Wall of Sticky Notes (aka “The Board”)”
In homage to autumn and Thanksgiving, our theme this month is FALL AND FAMILY. I hope we all share memories of days of pumpkin and apple picking, baking pies and making homemade applesauce. As both children, and the keeper of children, we can’t deny the pure delight of the delicious aromas and tasty delights that …
Continue reading “What We’re Reading This Month: Fall and Family”
Halloween is the perfect time to write about the antagonist: the bad guy, the killer, the malevolent force who’ll make your protagonist’s life pure hell. The trick here is to write an antagonist who is strong enough to make you root for the protagonist. When I wrote my first novel, I knew that Lucifer would …
Continue reading “BOO! Did I Scare You? Writing the antagonist”
In the last few weeks, I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about nature. And zoning laws! And bureaucratic stupidity. Well maybe not stupidity, let’s be kind and call it arrogance, or kinder still, ignorance. Can sugar-coating turn a bitter truth into candy? Or change how we as a species, deliberately, with planning and …
Continue reading “Into the Wild Part II”
We spend months, years, writing a book of dazzling brilliance. We might be the only ones who think so, but hey, it was so hard, such a long process, such a fun process, such a tortured, frenetic, creative, maddening, exhilarating process, that only something splendid could emerge. You know, like a baby, who every mother …
Continue reading “Drown or swim in a saturated book market”
Some writers’ stories just come to mind, fully formed. Lucky them. It’s more likely that snippets of a story streak through your brain, like a naked drunk criss-crossing the football field, and when you chase it down to determine whether this tale is hot or not, it evaporates into thin air. Or maybe there’s a …
Continue reading “3 Simple Tips for Finding Your Story”
2013 has turned out to be a really bad year for me, physically that is. First, I broke my left ankle and then a few months later broke the right. Perhaps a little investigation into bone density is in order? The first one wasn’t so bad because after six weeks of no-weight bearing I could …
Continue reading “The Stink of Blue Jasmine: Writing the Protagonist”