Ahhh, summertime ~ a time to play and enjoy family with lots of picnics and ice cream. AND time to prepare for WRITERCON 2021! You’re busy and may be struggling to keep a consistent writing time this summer. BUT events like WriterCon 2021 only come once a year. Here are THREE UNEXPECTED reasons to drop…
How would you feel if you were assigned to write a blog about self-discipline? Me? I’m thinking about chocolate right now. Or cookies hot out of the oven. If you’d asked me to write about celebrating in December, I’d be your girl. But self-discipline in January? I systematically purged my pantry and refrigerator after our…
A speech impediment plagued my five-year old self. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pronounce my name. The letter L was impossible, the R tricky. My name, Laurel, required mastery of one or the other. The sound that tumbled out of my mouth in an untidy heap was not my name. Awkward, mumbling…
Summer heat crept through narrow slits around our front door. The cracked tile on one end of the foyer drew my eyes up to a hole in the drywall from a roller blade mishap. Mental note. Find a bigger rug. I picked up a rumpled carpet runner to shake it outside. A crawdad fell out….
Every story needs a good hero. The flawed one we love to root for. The one who faces a challenge and comes out stronger on the other end. Even a superhero has a weakness. Maybe he’s misunderstood or misjudged in an ordinary world where he just doesn’t fit. Worse, a malevolent creep lurks nearby with…
One night in 2009 on Britain’s Got Talent, a little woman walked on stage, hairy eyebrows and a saucy attitude. Nervous, she struggled to remember where she lived. In the background were snickers and whispers of ridicule as she shared her dream to become a professional singer. Everyone laughed. The judges and the audience. Until…
Big and hairy, green teeth dripping with goo. You get the idea. It’s a villain. No matter what he, she or it looks like, a bad guy’s primary goal is to shut down the good guy. The protagonist needs to make forward motion and for whatever reason, the villain disagrees. In good fiction, the bad…
I got serious about writing five years ago. That was the first step. I needed tools that would keep me going in a career where I worked alone and had little experience. Other than that, it’d be fun! The founders of Write Well, Sell Well shared their vision from the beginning. As successful writers, they…
All stories have a beginning. A good one sets the tone of the story to come. It attracts the reader to a protagonist who’s flawed, faces impossible obstacles, yet somehow triumphs in the end. At least that’s the gist of my favorite stories. True, there’s lots more to come, but a great start helps me…