Janet Chester Bly Copyright©2012 In writing fiction, sometimes you’ve got to know your animals. My sons and I had to do some study on horse behavior when we worked on author Stephen Bly’s last novel. In Stuart Brannon’s Final Shot, Brannon leaves the comfort and security of his Arizona ranch to head to Oregon to find his missing U.S. Marshal …
Demons and Darlings
by Michelle Arch After three years in Chapman University’s MFA program and six semesters of writing workshops, conferences, and purposeful study of the craft of writing, I have debunked any notion that existed in my mind that writing is a peaceful, innocuous, inner journey of the soul. Naïve pre-enrollment images of my writer self stretched out on a blanket in …
Burnout or Balance
by DiAnn Mills Recently I took an honest evaluation of myself, and I didn’t like what I discovered. Exhaustion pelted my mind and body. Did I mention cranky? I rose earlier in the morning and hit the pillow later at night. I cancelled breakfast meetings with friends and attended a writer’s conference where I failed to make all the necessary …
How to Write GREAT Action Scenes!
By MaryLu Tyndall In any great action scene your reader should be feeling and experiencing the same stress, fear, and excitement your protagonist is feeling. You want your readers on the edge of their proverbial seats! You want them screaming, “Oh no! What’s going to happen? How will they survive? Help!” So, how do you create that kind of tension …
Writing to Music
by Lisa Jordan “Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul.” ~Author Unknown My two sons have musical abilities they didn’t inherit from their parents. My oldest son sang in an a cappella and an elite choir in high school and college …
7 Reasons to NOT be a Writing Diva
by Carrie Fancett Pagels With the ACFW conference right around the corner, many may be tempted to pull their diva mantle out and pack it! Don’t! With narcissism so rampant in our culture that DSM revisions had to more narrowly define its features, one might wonder if I am spitting in the wind to even comment on this phenomenon. Even …
Characters Make the Novel
by B. J. Robinson Want to write a heart-touching novel? Let your characters drive the story. Develop well-rounded ones so readers will be able to identify and connect. Begin with your main character. In my novels Last Resort, Southern Superstitions, and Whispering Cypress, I started each one with a main character. In my August 11 release, Whispering Cypress, I created …
The Bathroom Scale
by Suzanne Woods Fisher On a sunny summer morning, my husband walked into the kitchen. “I fixed the bathroom scale,” he said, looking pleased. “You weigh five pounds more than you thought you did.” Steve thought that was good news. He’s an accountant. Numbers are important. Not those numbers, I tried to explain, barely able to hold back my indignation. …
What Do I Know?
by Eileen Key I’ve often heard “write what you know” and have done just that in many devotionals and articles which laid out events in my life-including the time my daughter was in FFA and I sheared sheep! That story made it into a rancher’s magazine. Then I tried my hand at fiction. Hmm. What did I know? Oh my. …
Make a Plan and Write it Down!
by Lacie Nezbeth At a recent, local writer’s conference, the attendees (myself included) were taught by New York Times bestselling author Susy Flory, and one of the most popular literary agents known to man, Chip MacGregor. Some of the topics they covered during the two day conference were: creating killer book proposals and queries, harnessing our fear of writing to …