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I picked this idea up at a Pikes Peak Writers Write Brain, and now I can’t remember who gave the presentation or the book that inspired them.  Dur. — A common problem I see with beginning writers is that they don’t know when to begin a story–that is, they’ll go on for pages and pages, […]

People who know me have heard this before, in one form or another:  being a hard worker is better than being talented. But today, I’d like to focus on a slightly different aspect:  inspiration.  I was having a conversation on Twitter with someone who insisted that he was stuck replanning his next project and couldn’t

One of the cool things about pen names is that, in creating a pen name, you’ve created an “identity,” in the marketing sense. For example, I created “De Kenyon” to write pulp stories for kids.  That’s it.  If you’re creating a pen name, you’re identifying your market; if you’re identifying your market, you’re creating an

Now at Smashwords, OmniLit, Barnes & Noble, Feedbooks, and Amazon.com. You can’t tie down an Amazon…there’s no coupon on this one; it’s my first permanently FREE story.  (Note:  It may take some sites longer than others to go free.) This was first published as in audio at Nil Desperandum. Miracle, Texas by DeAnna Knippling The man rode into

I asked for suggestions on games to play (indie, ~6 sessions, any genre, storytelling high, crunching low/medium), and I’ve already gotten multiple responses that look interesting.  This is to keep track, so I can find them later.  If you’re reading this and have more, let me know 🙂 I’ve played Weird West lately too, and

1.  The wandering in which you are looking for something in particular but do not know where to find it. 2.  The wandering in which you go to a place you do not know or do not know as well as you like and become lost in it. 3.  The wandering in which you are

Now at Smashwords, OmniLit, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. Praise be to those who steal not, but use this coupon this weekend at Smashwords:  GD23J Lady of the Floods by DeAnna Knippling Praise Be to Those Who Steal Not The picture on the cover was made by Cathy Miller Burgoyne, who records the weird and wonderful at her Arctic Fire website.

I’ve finished The Happiness Project now.  The point is that an accretion of small things (or a lack of accretion of small things, in the case of negative stuff) is what forms a greater sense of happiness. One of the small things that I pondered was the way she describes her books of clippings, trivia,

Because I’m feeling foolhardy today, I’m going  to work on commas. People have a lot of problems with commas.  Why?  Because there are 1001 rules, and nobody explains why you use them.  Comma between two complete sentences joined by a conjunction.  Yes, but why?  And why not between this and that? Commas for, well, interjections.

Something that was frustrating me a while back was coming up with solid story ideas.  I knew I could, on occasion, but not consistently.  Plus, the more I wander into the uncharted territory of pantsing (versus plotting), the more important it is to have something worth writing about. The interesting question is not, “Where do