by Ruth Harris As Anne and I looked back at the blog for the past year, a portrait emerged highlighting the themes and subjects that interested you most. We were intrigued by these clues about what was on our readers’ minds in 2014 and thought you’d be interested, too. So here are the […]
Confessions of NYT Bestselling Author Gone Indie
by Eileen Goudge We have a visit from a literary superstar this week. New York Times bestselling author Eileen Goudge has written 32 novels, sold over a million copies, and been translated into 22 languages. I first heard about Ms. Goudge in the 1980s, when my friends and I all ran out to buy her phenomenal […]
Frazzled, Overwhelmed, Swamped? A Writer’s Guide to Mental Health
by Ruth Harris You’re swamped and there are alligators in that swamp. They have sharp teeth and they bite. Their names are Stress, Clutter, Distraction, Disorganization, and Interruption. You’ve got a book to write, a cover to create, tweets to tweet, promos to set up, blurbs to polish, and pins to Pin. There’s metadata, […]
8 Bogus “Rules” New Writers Tell Each Other
by Anne R. Allen We get lots of questions from new writers who have spent time in forums and online writers’ groups where they’ve been given advice by other newbies. Some of that advice is fine, but a whole lot is dead wrong. Unfortunately, the wrong stuff is usually delivered with the most certainty. […]
Is Talent Overrated? 8 Things that are More Important than Talent for Writing Success
by Anne R. Allen I often run into new writers who want to be reassured they have talent. They sometimes ask me to read some fledgling work in hopes I’ll pronounce them “talented.”I always decline. (A wise author never goes there.) It’s not simply that I can’t fit one more thing into my already […]
How to Turn “Real Life” into Bestselling Fiction…and a Word about Memoirs
by Ruth Harris Writing a novel based on the lives of real people is much more than simply recounting their story—even if it’s a whizz-bang, humdinger of a story. The challenge is turning real people and real events into fiction. Having no guidelines at the time I wrote Decades, I figured it out as I […]
Is Perfectionism Slowing Your Writing Process? 7 Ways NaNoWriMo Can Help
by Anne R. Allen We’ve all met those people who think their sojourn on earth is meant to be a fault-finding mission. They can spot lint on your jacket at fifty paces, provide a litany of your imperfections whenever there’s a lull in the conversation, and be counted upon to tell you why your pumpkin […]
Living with Robot Overlords: How to Survive in Our Cyborg World
by Anne R. Allen Everybody tells us that to succeed as writers in the e-age, we need to be active in social media. And once we get the hang of it, most of us find it a lot of fun. Cyberspace can feel like a big old playground for writers. Look! I can type […]
Do Authors Obsess Too Much About Book Reviews?
by Anne R. Allen Let’s Face it: Getting Reviews is Tough Whether we’re newbies or superstars, traditional or self-publishers, pretty much all authors stress about reviews: getting them…and surviving them. From the time our first book launches, we’re told our number one job is to get reviewed. We send out ARCs, desperately query book bloggers […]
BLOCK-BUSTING: 14 Never-Fail Tricks Every Writer Needs to Know
by Ruth Harris Stuck? Can’t get there from here? Something’s wrong but you don’t know what. You’re chasing your tail in an endless loop with no off-ramps in sight. You’re stalled out at a dead end in a dark, scary forest. Happens to every writer and no one knows why, but your book—and you—have come […]
The Biggest Mistake New Writers Make and 5 Ways to Avoid It
by Anne R. Allen It’s been an exciting week for the blog. Marketing expert Penny Sansevieri named us to the Top 30 Websites for Indies and blog guru Molly Greene named us to her list of must-read “leaders” in self-publishing. (I’m only recently self-published—and most of my work is still with a small press—but […]
Writing Collaboration: Is it Right for You?
by Ruth Harris According to the sublime Cole Porter lyric: Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it.Writers do it, too. Often. Collaborate, that is. Peter Staub and Stephen King paired up to write horror and dark fantasy in The Talisman. Their Black House is a Stoker Award winner. Joe Konrath, an […]
5 Protagonists Readers Hate: Why Writers Shouldn’t Identify too Closely with a Main Character
by Anne R. Allen You can learn all you want about writing powerful prose, well-planned story arcs, lyrical descriptions—or any other aspect of fiction—but if you don’t have a protagonist your readers care about, none of the rest matters.I don’t think it’s terribly relevant to talk about character “likability” in the sense of “niceness.” The […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- …
- 23
- Next Page »
