Studying Emotions in Life & Writing Through Friendly Fire

I woke in the middle of the night to the rooster crowing at the moon. Strange but true. Poor pea brained birds don’t know the difference between the moon, a bright light bulb or the sun! Later, and still before the sun had risen, I woke again to the sound of a single gun shot. [...]

From Mount Vernon Estates to The Smithsonian: How the Setting of Buried

“No estate in United America is more pleasantly situated than this.” – George Washington, 1790 Ever wonder where an author gets an idea for a story? The idea for Buried Deception came in 2005 when my family took a three week homeschool tour up the East coast. Mount Vernon was one of our stops. I [...]

The Pomodoro Technique®: Productivity for Writers, One Tomato at a Time

Like most writers, I’m constantly busy. If you’re serious about writing, there’s a never-ending to-do list: blog, read, review, draft, edit, absorb, learn, redraft. But there are times when ‘busy’ turns into ‘overwhelming.’ When I’m trying to complete a big freelance project and write a first draft at the same time, for example. The level [...]

Author Mari McCarthy on No Time to Write

No time to write? Put it in your journal! A writer is for life. That’s why many who love writing find themselves now and then unable to devote time to it. There may be portions of your life when it’s no more possible to give serious attention to writing than it is to walk on [...]

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks

Like many aspiring novelists, I tend to collect “how to write” books. I think I have about a dozen on my bookshelf and have read another twenty from the library. All have been useful, inspiring, and informative in their own right, but only a chosen few have made it to my “must have” status. Story [...]

Writing Action vs. Summary

When it comes to writing fiction there are two ways to write scenes. One is to “show” the action. The other is to “summarize,” which is called narrative. How do you pick which to do when? Consider the importance of the scene. I’ve been working with some new writers and one common mistake is that [...]

On Writng and Life: There is a Time for Everything.

The preacher was right when he said in Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything. Take the very first novel I completed. First, a violent storm in my personal life and then a storm by the name of Hurricane Ivan left me, my family, and our city devastated. But all was not lost. The citizens [...]

The Teacher Becomes The Student

It’s much easier to assign writing than to teach writing. That epiphany in my profession as a high school English teacher was a blessing and a curse. . .for me and for my students. It meant I stopped bombarding them with the alphabet soup of essays (analysis, biography, comparison, definition, exemplification, etc.), and started devoting [...]

Top Ten Ways to Find Ten Minutes to Write

 No one should have to remind us that life is short. The Bible says it “fades quickly like grass.” In fact, the book of Proverbs is full of encouragement to make use of our time, to be wise with our gifts. If this is true, that we should, in fact, use every day wisely, then [...]

Finding Writing Inspiration on Vacation

I admit it. I bring the over-scheduled busyness of life with me on vacation. I kid myself that after nonstop seeing and doing for three or five days, I’ll be rested and ready to return to daily life with vigor. Still, I can’t pass on the opportunity to feed my mind with the experiences of [...]

« Previous Page — Next Page »