When Chitchat Takes the Wheel
Dialogue is a challenge. It’s got to sound real, but it can’t be too real because in real life people often go on at great length without saying much of anything. If your characters go on at great...
View ArticleBe Brave
Writing does take courage. It takes courage to sit down (or stand up, if you use one of those newfangled standing desks) expecting words to appear on the screen or sheet of paper in front of you,...
View ArticleKnock Knock
“Your writing will teach you what you need to know” is one of my mantras. (My other biggie is “The way out is through.”) It will, too. It does. Sometimes, however, I’m a little slow on the uptake. Like...
View ArticleLearn the Biggest Secret of Every Good Writer
Originally posted on Business in Rhyme: We all know that nobody is born as a good writer. It is a constant process of becoming. And I do believe that the difference between good and bad writers it’s...
View ArticleThe Power of Place
As a writer, I love revising and rewriting. As an editor, I do almost none of it. Critiques, yes. When a writer I don’t know asks me to edit a book-length manuscript, I generally suggest critique as a...
View ArticleH Is for Handwriting
My handwriting sucks. Here’s a sample: This is why I do nearly all my first-drafting in longhand: because I can’t read my own writing unless I slow way down and focus on each word. It took me a while...
View ArticleHow to Revise a Draft Without Going Crazy
There’s enough good advice in this excerpt that I’m seriously thinking of buying the book. I love revising and find it satisfying, but I often don’t know how to explain what I’m doing, or what needs...
View ArticleEditing Workshop, 5: Lead Paragraphs
Every work, long or short, fiction or nonfiction, has to start somewhere, but lead paragraphs are a major cause of writerly angst and even writer’s block. No surprise there: every how-to-get-published...
View ArticleShortening
The word count on draft #3 of Wolfie just slipped below 100000, from six digits to five, from this: to this: I cheered out loud, though (or maybe because) no one but the dog could hear me. Once he...
View ArticleBack to Wolfie World
OK, I’m back — I think. This morning I got back to Wolfie. Word, which never lies (though it rarely tells the whole truth either), told me that I’d last opened the file on October 2. That sounds about...
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U Is for Undo
My possibilities for U didn’t inspire me at all — usage? uniformity? — then this morning while Tam Lin and I were out walking, “undo” popped into my head. (This is why W is going to be for Walking....
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