Of all of my bad habits, the one I hate the most is that I get ready, I take aim, but rarely fire. Figuratively speaking. I have no follow through. I rarely reap the rewards of delayed gratification. I never stick with something long enough. This lovely little habit to over-prepare and under-deliver has left…

Despite my desire to remain hidden behind the sofa, I do occasionally teach classes.  Usually it’s when I can’t find a way to avoid doing so.  I’m a terrible public speaker. I am, however, a decent organizer for the information that floats around inside my head.  I’m a good researcher (to fill in the stuff…

  My NaNoWriMo Writers Group has been working on revision since the first of the year – it’s tough, I won’t lie.  We spend all of November telling ourselves how wonderful we are, experiencing that thrill of creating something new, in December we shelve those 50,000 words and feel awesome and accomplished. And then comes…

  I don’t think any of us got out of high school without hearing the word sonnet or a piece of Browning’s How do I love thee.  We all knew Shakespeare wrote some poems but most of us preferred Dr. Seuss.  So when I was first told my words were poetry, my response was: yawn….

  I was published completely by accident, it never should have happened.  At the time, writing was not my full-time job (although it was part of it) and I had never considered publishing anything I had written. I was working as a grief counselor and managed multiple real-world support groups along with several online ones. …

One of the things I teach other writers and chant in my own head is this:  write for yourself.  Tell the story you want to tell – the one you want to read.  Writing something that fits current best seller trends or might have mass market appeal may, in the end, stifle your creativity and…

  The very first writing class I took, the very first assignment, the very first thing I ever had to read aloud – was why do you write?  I decided then that this tale is all pretty dull and only matters to the writer, but it’s worth writing down.  It’s worth revisiting every-so-often.  It’s worth…

  Whether you write fiction, poetry, or memoir, it all has a piece of your story in it.  Maybe the question becomes:  how well is it hidden?  Last week we talked about zines and how they can include all sorts of writing.  This week, we’ll start out talking about a sub-category of the zine genre,…

Because I write cross-genre, I did promise to cover things other than just fiction.  Today we’ll segue into self-publishing in the form of a zine.  It may be a word you’ve heard before as it can be traced back to Ben Franklin, but zines gained popularity in the 1930s and 40s with the science fiction…

We all hear write what you know.  Some of us argue the point for multiple reasons – we’re not interesting enough, we’ll never learn anything new, writing is all about imagination.  (You can tell that I’ve had this chat with myself on multiple occasions.) But it’s true. The best characters contain a piece of the…