Birthdays can be millstones or milestones. It depends on our perspective and on where and how we see ourselves in this life. My seventy-fifth birthday passed recently. OK, it’s more like it flew by—a blur of the calendar pages spinning. More and more, birthdays are a time of reflection, of assessing. Where am I? How…
This month I want to share on a topic I first heard Randy Ingermanson teach several years ago. It’s a simple yet powerful tool to improve our stories. Simply stated—force your hero to make a choice. Not just any choice like which burger to order or coffee shop to visit. But a choice with consequences….
This is the latest in a periodic series about the common obstacles writers face. Both experienced and newbie authors deal with creating and crafting characters who are believable and real enough for the reader to want to follow for several hundred pages. For some writers, this can be the most challenging obstacle to overcome. How…
“You’re not a writer. You’re not even published.” My superior at my day job spoke these words many years ago. They were his response when my immediate lead told him I was writing. Talent has been described as something you either have or you don’t. You can’t learn it. I and many others disagree with…
Perfectionism is the bane of many a writer, even experienced ones. Each story must be perfect or it’s no good. There’s no middle ground. There’s no forgiveness for ourselves. We don’t allow for the fact we’re human, we’re frail, and, despite our pride, we don’t know it all. Perfectionism plagued my early years as a…
Once your character is born, she begins her journey into the story. To follow her on the trek we need use the pieces of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual knowledge she shows us to understand her motivation and to learn how she reacts to the story. Our story events should be realistic and unpredictable. She…
People have asked where my characters come from. My response frequently is, “I don’t know. He just showed up one day and said he had a story to tell.” That’s how Michael Archer, the protagonist of my Riverbend series, came to be. The first glimmer of book one, Journey to Riverbend, came, like most of…
This month, I’m continuing the series on finding the right word. Let me emphasize again this is part of the editing process more than it is part of the creative process, especially the first couple of drafts. Those early drafts are to get the story out so we have something to work with. Finding the…
It seems to me the more writing I do, the more I find myself looking for the right word, the perfect word to convey what I want. Maybe it’s the color of a character’s eyes, or the fury in the sky as a thunderstorm scuds through the air. It might be the clamor of city…
Over the next few blogs, I’ll be exploring some of the most common obstacles every writer faces at least once in their career. I’ll begin with the obstacle of time. “I think I’ve got a book in me if I could only find the time to write.” We’ve all heard this statement from would-be writers….