Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
This is a little something I whipped up for all our writer friends to sing around the tree. Happy Holidays! The 12 Days of Writers’ Christmas On the first day of Christmas, My true muse sent to me An idea with a wicked plot twist. On the second day of Christmas, My true muse …
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So, we have crisp fall nights. We have costumes. We have buckets and pillowcases brimming with treats. We have pumpkins grinning and flashights swinging. We have screams, haunted houses, whisps of dry ice floating around ruby red slippers, cowboy boots, and superhero tights. We have arrived at All Hallows’ Eve. Bwahaha. I’m not a big …
Continue reading “Halloween Treat – Edgar Allan Poe”
Publishing is competitive. It takes a number of different approaches and some long-range planning for any author, regardless of talent, to carve out a thriving career. The right prequel could make a huge difference in that plan, or it could spell disaster. But how do you know if a prequel is right for you? If …
Continue reading “Prequels: Just the Facts”
Emotional Writing One of our WOS sisters here just suffered the loss of her mother. I can’t imagine, although I know it’s coming. The woman who gave you life cannot and should not outlive yours. But it must be devastating. I once had a critique partner tell me to “go deeper.” That she could tell …
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It’s the one lesson I remember from my father, who died when I was young: play your hunches. Three years ago I went to a writing workshop in San Francisco. I had just been forcibly retired and thought I might look into another profession – one that didn’t involve Boards of Directors, staff, agendas, emails …
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If you’re like most of the writers I know, you’re not getting paid much to do what you do. You’re sitting up late at night or early in the morning. You’re writing between meetings and brainstorming quickly in the elevator on your iPhone while you rush off to make money until the day you can …
Continue reading “A Reason To Bleed”
Here in Arizona, spring isn’t as well-defined as it might be in your part of the world. Here, we call it spring when our temps get above the average 70 degrees of winter. For those three days, before the 100s begin, we have a version of spring. (Only kidding about the three days. Lots of …
Continue reading “Spring Cleaning the Writer’s Mind”
On Friday I did some creative writing. I often do, but this day was different because I plowed into my story and didn’t stop. That’s unusual for me. There are lots of distractions about: my cat (who looks like a cow) demands to go out and be let in and be fed and play in …
Continue reading “Hey There Writers, Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark”
Rejection sucks. There’s no better word to describe the feeling of just having swallowed a vacuum cleaner hose when: it’s taken you a year to pluck up the courage to phone The Man and ask him to escort you to a gala fundraiser, and he says no, he’d rather go out with Attila the Hun; …
Continue reading “Rejection: Honoring Your Creativity When No One Else Does”
Departing for a while from my posts on Cross Training for Writers, I set out to explore the barriers fiction writers must navigate if we’re to tell stories other than our own. So this is less a post about finding solutions than it is about raising questions, the answers to which will be different for …
Continue reading “The Fiction Writer’s Taboos: Are There Any?”