By Carrie Stuart Parks When I embarked on this writing journey, one of the decisions I needed to make was how serious I was going to be. How much was I willing to invest and for what end result? I wasn’t one of those kids who was the editor of the school newspaper, nor one that found writing a necessity …
Questions from a Young Writer
by Ann H. Gabhart Some time ago, a young writer asked me to answer some questions for her high school writing class. A writer can be young in years or simply young in writing experience. Many of you may be both or neither, but if you’re like me, you enjoy hearing what other writers say about the writing journey. So …
Decluttering Your Writing Life
By Jan Drexler Writing a book is a difficult task with thousands of details to keep track of. Just as we find it nearly impossible to navigate in a cluttered room, it’s hard to bring a story out of a cluttered mind. If you have problems concentrating on your story or sticking to your task, you may need to down-size …
Writely Dividing
By Kathy Parish Come with me into a very small Sunday School room in a small country church. There are no catchy posters decorating the walls. There are no reference books and no dry erase board as a teaching aid. For we have traveled back in time to 1961. There are one or two fifth graders in the class, taught …
Instant in Season and Out
By Shirley E. Gould I love salt! I love salty chips and popcorn. I love salt on my watermelon! A touch of salt on my vegetables makes them better. One thing I don’t love is a bland dish with no seasoning at all. It’s not tasty—plain. But, going overboard with seasoning can make food inedible. Whether it’s Cajun seasoning in …
Writing on the Move
By Rondi Bauer Olson I have lived close to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for twenty-five years, but, despite being an avid backpacker, I had never hiked the forty-mile trail in the park that follows the coast of Lake Superior. Determined to check this goal off my bucket list, I set aside four days last month to tackle the trek. There …
Be a Branch, Not the Vine
By Tracy Popolizio Jesus instructs us in John 15, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without …
Finding Your Voice in the Sounds and the Silence
By Bethany Turner Is there anything more mysterious to a writer than the concept of voice? We all want ours to be unlike any other in the market. To be distinct and powerful. But how do we go about developing it? More often than not, the top recommendation I see is to spend time reading other writers’ writing, to examine …
Crafting A Great First Line (Hooking The Reader)
By Rachel Hauck In a world where indie and traditional authors are scraping for every bit of shelf space and reader attention, we have to up our game. One of the best ways is to craft a dynamite first line. But it’s hard to craft a first line. Many of us settle for “good enough.” But here’s the power of …
A Story Needs People
by Ann H. Gabhart “I will go to my grave in a state of abject endless fascination that we all have the capacity to become emotionally involved with a personality that doesn’t exist.” (Berkeley Breathed) As a writer I have become emotionally involved with many characters that only came into existence because I imagined them and set them down on a …