Word choice is so important but I don’t like to get too hung up about it the first time. Okay, I lie. I do obsess but I know I shouldn’t. Why? Well, chances are I’m going to cut my first few chapters anyway. My plots never really get going until chapter three. Why do I […]
How Many Hours Do You Need to Write Each Day?
How many hours ideally would you like to write each day? Two? Four? Ten? I used to have this idea that the goal was always more. And that if I had more time, I’d have more pages and better pages, which would result in more books and better books. But, recently, I’m revising this idea. […]
Action Verbs for Fighting Scenes
Last week, a student in my tutorial at Hollins University delivered a presentation on techniques to bolster fighting scenes. Now I have to confess that I’m the sort of person who covers her eyes during fighting sequences in film. I was the kid who would watch the television show LOST IN SPACE, a campy science […]
To write more, I’m on a no TV, no movie diet, but am I taking it too far?
You might have noticed that I haven’t written in my blog, for ahem, one month. I had pledged to be a weekly blogger and I had been fulfilling that promise. But then I went to teach at Hollins and the blogosphere seemed so far away. Hollins University is a a woman’s college in Southwest Virginia, […]
Tweens and Facebook
As a parent of a tween and a young teen, it’s hard not to notice how Facebook use has crept younger and younger and younger. And as a children’s book author and a professor of children’s writing (Hollins University http://www.hollins.edu/grad/childlit/childlit.htm) who writes novels specifically for tweens, it’s my job to vollow this trend. In fact, […]
Questions to Ask an Independent Publisher
I haven’t worked with an independent publisher in fifteen years (not that I’m opposed). But I have lots of writing friends, as well as students, who are considering working with independent publishers asking me about contracts. Now I don’t have the best natural brain for business so this is not my area of strength. However, […]