Writing 101

Editing a piece of writing that you are emotionally invested in is not easy. After all, if you did not care about your characters and story, why write it at all? But if you can gain some emotional distance and keep in mind that the editing process, if handled well, can make the story...

Once upon a time I thought that finishing a novel was a lofty and almost unreachable goal but then I finally reached the end of my 75,000 word work. Then I asked myself the inevitable question: Now what? Because not only did I want to complete a novel length work, but I want it to...

oday I ran up against the nemesis called "Vision of Perfection" while I was working on my novel. VoP is a foe I have encountered before and thought I had permanently defeated, but today she showed up once again and tried to derail my work. Vision of Perfection or VoP works like this. You...

A writer friend of mine recently had an epiphany while running on a treadmill. The name of a collection of stories she has been working on came to her as she ran. While she caveated this revelation with the fact that she wants to create about 25 percent more original material, and the fact...

A few weeks ago I was at Books Inc. in Alameda, California where Elizabeth George was speaking about writing and promoting her newest book, This Body of DEATH. Elizabeth said, "I am not planning on reading from my book tonight, I imagine you all can do that yourselves..." Rather, she spoke about her process...