On Writing
The Presidents on Writing
Practically every president has written a book; some have even written those books all by themselves. The general consensus is that the honor of greatest writer among the presidents falls to Abraham Lincoln—with Ulysses S. Grant a distant second—but all who’ve...
WRITE BY HEART: Creating stories that pack an emotional punch
It’s been a rough couple of years and many of us are simply exhausted. Outrage fatigue, pandemic fatigue, crisis fatigue—all manner of fatigue has besieged us. To the point where all we feel lately is numb. At least that’s how I’ve been feeling. And then I watched two...
What I Learned from Crime Bake: A Writer’s Story
There are certain times in a writer’s life when everything changes. You may not see it at the time, but when you look back, you realize that was the moment that changed you, your writing, and your writing career forever. For me, this happened when I moved to New...
Writing Nature
When I was a very young woman, I heard a writer say that when you set a story in a given place, you should be able to name every bird, every tree, every flower in that setting. I remember thinking, “Uh oh.” As an Army brat who moved at least once a year, I barely got...
Writing About the Pandemic—or Not?
This is the question I hear all the time from writers of all levels of experience. The uncertainty of life during the pandemic has affected everyone in the book business—writers, agents, editors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, reviewers. We publishing...
Writing Lessons from Lin-Manuel Miranda & Company
We all have our heroes. Lin-Manuel Miranda is one of mine. In case you’ve been living in a cave, Miranda is the Pulitzer Prize, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award-winning creator and original star of HAMILTON: The Musical and IN THE HEIGHTS. So when I heard that he was...
YOUR NONFICTION IS SHOWING: What Nonfiction Writers Should Learn—Or Unlearn—to Write Good Fiction
If you write nonfiction by day—news stories, blog posts, law briefs, sales copy, collateral, tech writing, etc.—then making the transition from nonfiction to fiction holds some special challenges. As an agent, editor, and writing instructor, I teach a lot of aspiring...
PLOT THAT NOVEL! A Baker’s Dozen of Plotting Tricks & Tips, Courtesy of Atwood, Christie, Doctorow, Fitzgerald, Sorkin, and more
Start with characters. “Action is character.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald Start with action. “Get your character in trouble in the first sentence and out of trouble in the last sentence.” ― Barthe DeClements Put your characters in motion. “All fiction is about people,...
OBEDIENCE TRAINING FOR WRITERS: What living with dogs teaches us about writing
Dogs and writing. Writing and dogs. Hard to say which comes first in my life, since we have three rescue dogs and the mystery series I write features former MP Mercy Carr and her retired bomb-sniffing Malinois Elvis. I’ve also written a memoir...
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