Edited Section 2 and scheduled post for next week. I gave a talk to the Pikes Peak Writers in October 2019 on this topic, “How to Read Like a Writer.” I thought about more or less transferring that talk to this chapter–but could not do it.  I probably have ADD (I wasn’t diagnosed as a […]

If you would like to know the “secret” to writing better (which does not necessarily mean that you will publish or sell well), then here it is: Read; read wisely; study what you read. This statement is admittedly worthless as given, and of course there are other practical considerations like making time to write that

Edited Section 1 and scheduled post for next week. The first sections stayed mostly the same with minor edits, but I completely tore out the first part of “You are comfortable releasing the material” and rewrote it. It didn’t focus on the writer as a writer as much as I hoped it had. In my

The bare minimum of being ready to publish is as follows: You know how to legally make money at publishing books.  You know how to legally write books. You know how to legally obtain art and other design material for your books. You are comfortable releasing the material. These are the basic elements of what

So here’s how the process is going: I was doing fine until I announced the project and people started signing up, at which point I decided–keep in mind, I was fine before this–that I was a fraud and going to fail. You don’t need to tell me it’s all gonna be fine. I have two

(Note: Patreon is bad at nested lists of bulleted/numbered items; some of what you see may be formatted differently elsewhere.) Intro This first part of the Writing Craft series will cover areas of writing that are more about mental blocks and best practices than actual craft. As much as I’d like to dive straight into

This is going to be a mess for a while, and as different volumes are completed, I will pull out the information to the invididual volumes. Please note: I am most familiar with US requirements and methods. I will try to cover UK and Canadian requirements and methods, but am less sure of how those

   Here is the planned outline for Writing Craft: Lessons for the Working Writer. It may take some time 🙂 Individual books: Cover Copyright Table of contents Intro to series Intro to book BOOK (by numbered section): Vocab as necessary, What I’m gonna tell you, The main point of the section, broken down into steps

Note, I’m experimenting with putting up my writing posts on Patreon as preparation for a book on writing Intermediate Fiction. Test post 🙂 What is subtext: There’s a thing in theater called “on the nose.” This is when you come right out and have the characters say exactly what they’re thinking, straightforwardly.  This is generally

 Hello, all! I have a story out in a new anthology, Ever After Fairy Tales #2: Innocence and Deceit, “Dr. Rudolfo Meets his Match.”  The editor, Jamie Ferguson, said she had a lot of Cinderella retellings in this one, but they were all so different she just decided to run with it.  Also new is the