I have a confession. Sometimes, more times than I care to admit, my passion for writing wanes. It hurts just writing that, but it's true. And there are many reasons why this occurs: fear, self-doubt, the busyness of life, just to name a few. But when you are a writer (and by this, I mean not just one who writes, but one who is compelled to, who MUST write), you have to overcome everything that keeps you from the page and get to writing. Poste Rose image by Pixomar at FreeDigitalPhotos.Net When we realize that our writing mojo is on empty, it's important to take some measures to remedy the problem. Here are three suggestions that I use to kick-start the writing. Think about Your Love of Writing Why do you love to write? This is not the time to think about your current situation: that is, the situation where you are not writing and you feel your desire is long gone. This is a time to think about your past writing experiences. Why did you start writing? How do yo...

March is Women’s History Month. When I found this out on that great well of information known as the internet, it got me to thinking about the great women authors who have influenced my writing over the years. Maybe it was because I attended an all-girls school, but as I look back on my literary education, it’s mostly classic authoresses, like Jane Austen, the Brontës, Emily Dickinson, and Harper Lee, who loom large in my imagination. Jane Austen - Image courtesy of Wikicommons There’s something about the unique emotional complexity of some of the great female authors that I believe all writers should study and try to emulate. In many cases, the worlds that women write about are far closer and more intimate than the worlds of their male counterparts. Jane Austen was something of a revolutionary for writing about the necessity of a good marriage and what the lack of one meant for women at the time she was writing. Harper Lee took on the injustices she saw around her through the ey...

Yesterday we began our discussion on screenwriting and touched on the three-act and four-act structures. So what about this four-act thing? How did this come about? What is the deal? Google Images: Star Wars The truth is, it’s not much different than the three-act structure. The issue was that people were having problems with the second act. In fact, most writers tend to struggle with the middle of the story. Usually people have a better idea of how things start and how they end. Connecting the two seems to be troublesome. Things have a tendency to lag or get blown off-course. Enough people had problems with the middle of their stories that something had to be done about it. The three-act structure just wasn’t cutting it. One keen individual, Syd Field, came up with something called the Midpoint, the point directly in the middle of the screenplay. This effectively divided the troublesome second act into two more manageable parts. Thus, the second act simply gets broken up i...

It’s hard to resist the allure of Hollywood. It’s just sexy, you know? All the stars and fanciness, the flashy lights. The whole process of making a movie is certainly more fascinating than the process of making a novel. Kids don’t run away from home to clamor at the doors of elite New York City literary agencies, trying to land whatever job they can. Movies are just a bit more glamorous than books are, and there’s no shame in hoping to see a story of yours translated to the big screen. If you’ve ever caught yourself saying, “This could be a movie,” you are not alone. Imagining which stars will get to bring your characters to life is part of the fun. For many writers, though, the world of film is a mystery. Maybe you’re curious about how the industry works, what makes screenwriting different from writing a novel, what tricks you can learn from the Hollywood masters to help improve your own craft. That’s what I’ll be helping you with in this series. The film industry has a lot to...

“In like a lion, out like a lamb” Old Saying  Welcome to March - the month which does march toward spring or toward winter depending on where you live. Digression: How wonderful to be able to write something which can be read all over the world by just pressing a button - huzzah for the internet. In the spirit of the old saying at the top of this post, I’ve thought of a few fun ways for you to discover your writing style: Are you a lion or a lamb? Digression: Please remember that I am the creator of the Writing Sheep, so I may have a slight prejudice. Sheep #1: That’s not a baaaad thing. Me: Shhhh.  You may be a lion writer if… You roar through your drafts. You're male and have long hair. You’re female and you do the killing Hey - that’s me!   Sheep #2: EXCUSE ME??? Me: Shhhhh. You like to be the boss. Your writing is wise and powerful.  Okay, I admit it. My writing has never been described with those terms. Bring on the sheep....

Showing is illustrated through actions and interiority rather than the author telling us how the character is reacting and behaving. Here are five danger zones to watch out for. 1. Action : Don't tell us what a character does; describe what constitutes the action. Telling : Dick worked hard. Showing : Dick wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. He lifted the axe and swung: thunk, swipe, thunk. The chunk of wood sheared into small pieces. Each blow reverberated through his shoulders and back. Telling : Jane walked quickly through the aisles, tossing in items without looking at them. Showing : Jane strode down the aisles, grabbing boxes of cereal and crackers and cans of soup, reaching for familiar colors and logos, more concerned about getting back to the case than her menu plans for the week. 2. Emotions: Show the emotion, don't name it. Telling : Jane felt sad. Showing : Jane sat at her desk, staring at the coffee ring on the scarred ...

Welcome to March, dear readers, and another month of writing adventures. We'll be exploring script writing a bit (who doesn't want their novel to become a movie?) and examining the differences between book and movie plots, which tend to have dissimilar story arcs. It's perhaps important to first understand the monomyth or hero's journey concept upon which so many modern movies are based. Joseph Campbell held that numerous myths from different times and places share fundamental structures and stages, which he summarized in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  You can read more about it at Wikipedia which has a comprehensive essay on Campbell's work. There are also many YouTube videos including this TEDx production:   On Thursday, author, artist, and actor, Daniel Donche will share his expertise on how the hero's journey is important to screen writing, and can even improve the plotting in your novel if consciously applied to characters and plots at k...

Try this gentle exercise to free the muscles surrounding your spine. The result is that you will increase your flexibility, improve your posture, and flush out toxins stored in your muscles so that you can maintain radiant health. Perfect for writers!

SELEKTED RITING WRULES: 1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects. 2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. 3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. 4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. 5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.) 6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration. 7. Be more or less specific. 8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary. 9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies. 10. No sentence fragments. 11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used. 12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos. 13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous. 14. One should NEVER generalize. 15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches. 16. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. 17. One-word sentences? Eliminate. 18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. 19. The passive voice is to be ignored. 20. Eliminate commas, th...

The pull is strong. We need more money. We want to be rich and famous, emphasis on rich.  Sometimes I joke that I will do anything for a dollar, but it is just a joke. Honest. Even though I have been tempted to join in the financial success of writers who have embraced the erotica genre , I have not stepped over an ethical line I hold dear. That line has to do with our responsibility as writers as to what we are contributing to society by what we write. What prompted this post is the lively discussion online about Fifty Shades of Grey ,and the messages that story gives to young people. I tried to read the book, but I couldn't get past the fact that Grey was an abuser and took advantage of Ana, a vulnerable insecure woman. Instead of empowering her, he overpowers her. Is that the kind of man we want our sons to emulate? I'd rather they become the kind of men that Terry Odell featured here in her post about heroes on Thursday. Some people are dismissing the social impac...

We haven't played this game in a while, so it's time to start it up again. I present a topic, ask some questions, and offer my answers. You pick one or more questions to also answer. If you only choose one, please expand. If more, please shorten. You're allowed to include one website URL or blog link of your own. Okay, here goes: Which social media sites do you visit? ( not including blogs or Yahoo groups) In the order of how often I visit them: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus, and Goodreads. Which do you find most relaxing? Hands down, that would be Pinterest. I can't resist all the pretty pictures. I wish I had more time to play there.  Which do you find most stressful? Facebook is definitely the most stressful. People are not bashful about expressing opinions there, which don't always coincide with mine. Trying to offer a differing opinion, even politely, gets me into trouble, so I don't try too often.  Lin...

Photo by Peter Dutton , via Flickr When it comes to fiction, rules and limits almost always inspire me. And I’m not talking about grammar rules. My first manuscripts were crime novels written for adults, and I wrote without restriction, free to pepper my dialogue with swear words exactly as I heard them spray from my characters’ mouths. Then I rediscovered tween/teen and young adult fiction. And, before I knew it, a bubbly teenager stepped into my writer’s brain and rattled off a fantastic story I couldn’t wait to get down on screen. But I’d have to curb the curses if I was writing a book for kids. Easy enough, surely? Except, sixteen-year-old boys don’t go around saying “drat” and “darn” when something goes wrong. It was an interesting writing challenge to imply, but not actually specify, strong language. Another (self-imposed) limit was that none of the main characters could die. Again, it sounds simple enough – but it removes a lot of easy tension and conflict. More creati...

Image by Jason Rogers , via Flickr When it comes to attracting readers in a book shop, there are four factors in play. The first three are external: your title, the cover art, and the blurb on the back. In conventional book publishing, command decisions concerning these external aspects of the book are generally dictated by people in the marketing department of the publishing firm. 1 The remaining fourth factor is the book’s opening paragraph. Here is where you-the-author come into your own. Your first paragraph of your first chapter is what gives a prospective reader the first real taste of what the book is about. It’s important to be aware of this, and not squander the opportunity to captivate the prospective book-buyer and clinch a sale. Anybody can come up with a prosaic first paragraph. There’s no great effort of thought involved, and the results are often about as interesting as reading an office memo. It takes imagination to rise above the purely functional. T...

As a writer of romance, the ideal "hero" is something I deal with constantly. Brave, strong, good-looking, right? Not necessarily. I first saw a reference to the following article in Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels , by Sarah Wendell. An article in the Boston Globe in October 2009 by oncologist Robin Schoenthaler stated "the ideal man … is the man who will hold your purse in the cancer clinic:” Dr. Schoenthaler wrote: I became acquainted with what I’ve come to call great ‘purse partners’ at a cancer clinic in Waltham. Every day these husbands drove their wives in for their radiation treatments, and every day these couples sat side by side in the waiting room, without much fuss and without much chitchat. Each wife, when her name was called, would stand, take a breath, and hand her purse over to her husband. Then she’d disappear into the recesses of the radiation room, leaving behind a stony-faced man holding what was typically a whit...

Image by Artur Bergman , via Flickr Before I talk about specifics, let me mention that this particular book I’m talking about was written ten years ago. Resurrecting an old manuscript has its own set of problems, but those tend to be technology and history. Oh, and let’s not forget the quality of writing. The operation I needed to perform was much more complicated. I’ve written all my books in third person point of view, but toward the middle of my current work in progress, my critique partner kept telling me that my heroine was standing on the sidelines, without much emotion. A cardboard character. No matter what I did, I got the same response from her with each page swap. I always have multiple POVs―four in this book―which is the reason first person never worked for me, except for two short stories I wrote for different anthologies. Was writing this one character in first person the solution to my problem? What about the other three POVs? Before I tested the POV switch, I c...

Merciful heavens, it snowed again last night. I suppose it might be possible to view such an event in one of two ways. Egad, more dad-blasted snow on top of an inch of sleet? Or, perhaps, Oh, how pretty! And much less than the forecast called for; aren't we lucky? A mighty force is the attitude, as is the adjective. How a person, place, or thing is presented can have lasting impact on the mind of the reader; the power can be used for good or ill. Consider the coat that I spied last week, pieced together from what appeared to be upholstery leftovers. I could tell you that it was a cabbage rose-printed nightmare direct from the diseased imaginings of a demented seamstress . On the other hand, I could also say that it was an eye-catching design that made clever use of found fabric. You see? Our descriptions have power. A wise author will choose the most important detail as a focal point, letting the rest flow from there. The CMOS warns against using any language t...

When I recently self-published my haiku books, I had to make many decisions that weren’t word-related. Like the cover designs for the books. I worked with Cathy Davis who I already knew to be an outstanding designer because she designed the covers and interiors for some of my clients’ books. First, Cathy and I, plus my VAA Janica Smith , spent half an hour on the phone talking about the general plans for the book. Because this was not just one book, but a series of seven, Cathy suggested that they all have commonality of design and color, yet could stand alone as individuals. Yes, that’s it, I said. Then Cathy emailed me a bunch of very detailed questions about my vision for the books, what I wanted readers to feel or know by reading them, what colors or images came to my mind when I thought about my books, and other great questions that made me think. I answered her questions as best I could. I said that haiku can be deceptively simple, deceptively plain, understate...

What do you find fun about writing? Getting to know characters? Watching them extricate themselves from traps that disrupt their journeys? Letting their stories roll off fingertips that race to keep pace with mental images playing in the mind? Editing? Proofreading? Cover design? Layout? Publishing? Printing? Marketing? Courtesy of Godserv at morguefile.com An introvert by nature and a true wimp when it comes to selling my wares, I love the writing part, the developing part, the watching-them-grow part. I can do basic cover and interior design (not to be confused with or used in place of expert design). Nit-picky beta readers top my list of “go-tos.” Courtesy of click at morguefile.com However, lack of marketing skills, the weakest link in my writing chain, have regularly rained on my promotional parades. In the past, absence of stunning covers has diminished the face value of my books. I don’t want to be “a jack of all literary trades and master of none.” I love writing—...

Photo by Cara Lopez Lee When I can’t find a way into a story, sometimes I write another story to crack it open. One becomes a metaphor for the other, and the two bounce off each other, creating a third story. I discovered the value of this while helping my teenage sister with an essay for her college English class. She was supposed to create a metaphor that described her and then write about herself. She wrote a metaphor about being a seashell that adapts to changing tides. Then she got stuck. When we say our minds are blank, it’s often because we’re thinking too hard. The most creative writing comes from our subconscious, where we do more dreaming than thinking. I get my best ideas by dreaming them onto the page. Sometimes I have to trick my brain into doing that. That’s where telling another story comes in. Dreams are metaphors: I may dream I’m a waitress working alone in a restaurant full of angry customers because in reality people are asking too much of me. Stories a...