Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Ruth Harris The lights are red. All signs are Stop Signs. That stack of pages you thought was going to be a book? You know, with characters, a setting, maybe even a plot? Somehow, it vanished in a wasteland of false starts, dead ends and dead darlings. Why? What happened? You’re the author — […]
A transition sentence is like a bridge by Ruth Harris At a writers’ workshop, I once heard a beginning writer talk about how it had taken him almost all day to write a paragraph describing his character waking up in his bedroom upstairs and going to the kitchen downstairs to make breakfast. “He made eggs […]
Ruth Has a different kind of post for us today. She offers us a monologue by her hilarious character, Blake Weston, from “The Big Six-O,” the first in her “Cozy in the City” series. Here’s Blake facing her 60th birthday: by Ruth Harris From: Carbon paper to carbon emissions. Edward R. Murrow to Tucker Carlson. […]
by Ruth Harris The nip slip and wardrobe malfunction make good fodder for the gossip sites, but, for writers, wardrobes — clothes and accessories — are a powerful tool in the arsenal. 1. Clothes and accessories show, not tell. Clothing and accessories instantly convey status, setting and mood. They have their own language and vocabulary and […]
by Ruth Harris OK, admit it. You’re one of them. You’ve walked the walk of shame. You threw up your hands, flew the white flag of surrender, and gave up. That book, the one you started with such high hopes, is dead. It bit the dust mumble-mumble years (decades?) ago. Now it’s a ghost, a goblin, draped […]
Amazon and Bookbub offer great marketing tools. And they’re free! by Ruth Harris Yeah, we know… A BookBub feature will rocket your book skyward. Stacked promos can help you tickle the algos and ride the tsunami. A great launch strategy well executed can get your book a bestseller badge. But all these options are pricey—especially […]
