Writing that First Draft out of Sequence

January 25, 2012

Over the course of the last year I have been writing intermittantly on a book that is new to my experience. It isn’t exactly a mystery, and not sci fi, and I haven’t any idea what it is. However, I have had the MOST FUN with it because it has posed problems I’d never encountered [...]

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Criticism Hurts Writing

September 13, 2010

Many of the people who come to my fiction writing classes have taken a course at some college or university. Almost no one had a good experience. I have a degree in Mass Communication and Creative Writing, and I took probably eight of those courses and workshops, so I have some idea of what they [...]

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Writing Seminar in DWF!!!

September 13, 2010

Remember that this Saturday September 18 is the seminar on writing your first draft. It’s a four hour fun fest at the Cotton Mill in McKinney, Texas. Our friends at M Group Design/M Group Studio are hosting the event. To sign up for this content-heavy seminar is http://www.mgroupstudio.net/creative-writing.html . You can register online. Also take a [...]

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Dressed To Kill

September 6, 2010

This morning, while standing in my closet, my thoughts wandered to the process of dressing to write. Yes, I write. I write mysteries, sci fi, and children’s stories. Have you read me? No. I write for myself–well, not completely. There is an agent out there somewhere destined to fall for my characters and demand they [...]

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Getting Your Idea On Paper

August 3, 2010

How many of you have signed up for a writing class because you had a cool idea for a novel, but discovered you couldn’t get answers to simple questions? I have. I’ve taken lots of those novel writing courses, and I’ve never seen an instructor answer the following : How do I get the idea [...]

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9 Tips for Preventing Writers Block

June 9, 2010

For most writers, just the mention of writer’s block sends chills down the spine. It’s a scourge, a plague, a deadly sneeze in a locked, windowless room. No one wants to catch it, but it arrives at inconvenient moments to stifle creativity. “What can I do? I’m just blank,” my students ask. I have a [...]

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