Blog

Write badly. “Get it all down. Let it pour out of you and onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft.” — Anne Lamott Write quickly. “I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three...

My father died last week. The Colonel was the one family and friends invariably went to for advice, and he was always more than happy to hand out his own brand of wisdom, battle-tested in combat and inspired by his personal holy trinity of Jesus, Patton, and Napoleon...

“When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.” --Raymond Chandler Whether you outline first or simply plunge in by the seat of your pants, there may come a time when you realize your story engine is failing and you need a jumpstart, fast,...

Keeping a series fresh and fun is a challenge—and it does not get any easier. As I sit down to write Book Four in my Mercy Carr series, I find myself rethinking everything I’ve learned about writing a series so far—often the hard way—and reminding myself of key take-aways:

We’ve all heard the old writing saw Write what you know. I usually embellish this as: Write what you know. Write what you love. Write what you’d love to know. But thanks to the pandemic, many of us are spending way too much time at home, and I for one am getting...

During this wild and crazy pandemic year I planted my first potager garden. Something I’d always planned to do but finally managed to pull off. Like writing my first novel. I learned a lot, and a lot of what I learned applied to writing as well as gardening. You amend...

With the summer now officially over, we all go back into school mode, sharpening our pencils and our plots, renewing our commitment to writing. As artists we never stop learning, and many of us take advantage of the many conferences, workshops, classes, critique...