Archive:
Tools
How do you become a better athlete, musician, scholar—or anything? You know. Practice. You run drills, play scales, review flashcards, whatever it takes. So how do you become a better writer? Speaking only for myself, I feel I get better by exercising my writing muscles. In other words, I write. Many of my colleagues swear […]
Read More
Guest post by Becca Puglisi When it comes to story conflict, there are so many options to choose from. Power struggles, physical threats, moral dilemmas, failures, ticking clocks — they’re all great for ratcheting up tension, building reader empathy, and strengthening our plotlines. But the conflict we face most often as human beings — the […]
Read More
You have a great idea and you want to start writing a book. You love to write. You’re told you have a way with words. Your friends and family might even be encouraging you to write. But you struggle with: How to begin How to start fleshing out your ideas How to know whether the […]
Read More
Guest Post by Tami Nantz If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, it’s imperative you become what Jerry calls a ferocious self-editor. There’s no way around it. Little irritates an agent or a publisher’s acquisitions editor more than having their time wasted by a writer who doesn’t edit and revise his own […]
Read More
Writing a book can be an organizational nightmare. You find yourself scribbling ideas, scenes, research notes, you name it, on napkins, in notebooks, on sticky pads, or keyboarding stuff into files you can’t find later on your computer. What if you could keep ALL that stuff, even photos and graphs and charts, all in one […]
Read More