by Cherie Tucker
June 2013
Mrs. Jackson, my second grade teacher, had our class remain standing after the flag salute and repeat “Feb-ru-ary, li-brar-y, and pump-kin.” Anyone who said “liberry” or “Feb-you-ary,” or, heaven forbid, “punkin,” was taken into the cloakroom and paddled. She would have had a field day with the fellow I heard on the radio this week say “mis-cheevʹ-e-ous” instead of “misʹ-chiv-us.”
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
When I was a kid, it was common for cat owners to let their cats outside, at least in my small world. No one wanted them to get run over or harmed in any way, of course, but the fact that it happened sometimes was accepted - the way we accepted the possibility of accidents and illnesses of all kinds.
Read Moreby Brian Mercer
June 2013
My wife is extraordinarily photogenic. I’ve never seen a bad photo of her. Her passport picture is stunning. Her employee ID badge looks like a professional headshot. Even her driver’s license resembles an author’s photo from the inside of a book jacket.
Read Moreby Christina Katz
June 2013
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
The one word that best describes a writer’s platform is “process.” Your platform is creative, just as writing is creative. There is a beginning, middle, and an end to a platform project, but there is never an end to your platform progress from the moment it begins until your career is over. However, if you leave a distinct enough legacy, your platform will survive even after you are gone.
Read Moreby Abigail Carter
June 2013
A few years ago my memoir, The Alchemy of Loss: A Young Widow’s Transformation (McClelland and Stewart, 2008) was published. My Canadian publisher set up my book launch party, scheduled me for radio and TV interviews, and submitted my book to newspapers and contests for review. I felt like a real, bona fide author.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
June 2013
Last fall, an aspiring writer asked me to give a short speech on editing to members of her local writers group, followed by a Q&A session. “I’d love to help!” I said with a smile, and we scheduled my appearance for three months later. About two months before my scheduled appearance at the neighborhood library, a scheduling conflict arose. I sent her a very nice email with my sincerest apologies, stating that I wouldn’t be able to give the speech on the planned date, but perhaps we could reschedule.
Read Moreby Jason Black
June 2013
Readers are quick to decide whether they like, loathe, admire, or pity a new character. Those first impressions are vital because the success of a story often rides on whether a reader’s perception matches what the author intended.
Read MoreAn Excerpt from The Magical Path by Marc Allen
June 2013
We have all the tools we need now. The process remains a mystery, but we know how to set it in motion. We’ve already seen remarkable changes in our lives; now it’s time to create some remarkable changes in our world as well. The same magical tools that work to create the life of our dreams are the tools we can use to make the world a far better place when we leave it than when we arrived here.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
May 2013
As writers (or creative people of any kind), we often contend with the need to be “disciplined”. And often being disciplined is about making ourselves do things - on a schedule with dedication. The portrait of discipline is painted with a sense of sternness and having to take a hard line. Though there are many examples of people who work happily, regularly, and effectively, if it seems too easy, commonly we no longer use the word, “disciplined” to describe them.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
May 2013
Last month we talked about when to capitalize and when not to when using colons. That caused a lot of questions about other capitalization problems (did you notice “a lot” is two words?). We talked about some of this a couple of years ago, but here is a review.
Read Moreby Noelle Sterne
May 2013
What Kind of Writer?
I didn’t start out to be a self-help writer. My first love was poetry, and I actually published a handful of poems. Then I ventured into fiction, with a few more acceptances. Nonfiction, and especially self-help writing, was the farthest thing from my mind and computer.
Read Moreby Paula Margulies
May 2013
When it comes time to market a book, many authors believe that certain aspects of promotion are more important than others. Some feel that Internet marketing is the answer to sagging sales, while others think that simply hiring a publicist will address their sales problems. Some focus mainly on items like book videos or blog tours, while others rely on repeated pleas to their social networking followers in the hopes of encouraging them to buy.
Read Moreby Jason Black
May 2013
Sci-fi, fantasy, and historical fiction share something in common: a strong need for a well-established setting. A well-developed setting gives readers a clear intuition about how characters will behave. Without that, readers can’t tell what makes sense for the characters to do, which ultimately ruins the reader’s suspension of disbelief.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
A student at the University of Washington just asked me when to capitalize words that follow colons. She wondered if there were rules or if it was just a matter of taste. Well, yes, Virginia, there are rules. In fact, there are two pages of them in The Gregg Reference Manual, but let’s boil them down.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
Last month, I was honored to be one of three panelists on the Publishers Weekly SXSW (South by Southwest) panel, “Self-Publishing in the Age of E.” The other two invited panelists were Hugh Howey, self-publishing phenomenon and author of Wool—which was recently featured on the cover of The Wall Street Journal and earned Howey over $1 million before it was bought by Simon & Schuster—and New York agent Kirby Kim, of William Morris Endeavor.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
The other day I was at my desk trying to get myself to start working. I didn’t feel like doing anything, it seemed, and yet I also wanted to work. Frustrated and unable to neither crack the proverbial whip nor walk away, I closed my eyes for a moment in the hope of releasing myself from this tug-of-war.
In my mind’s eye, I was back in eighth grade, musing over how good I felt rehearsing our graduation play (it was a musical) and helping out on the production. I thought about Sam (name changed for this tell-all account) – my “co-star,” a fellow eighth grader.
Read Moreby Pamela Moore Dionne
So one day as you sit in front of your computer staring at a blank screen you find that the words don’t come easy. Maybe they don’t come at all – not even when you hog-tie them and try to drag them onto the screen. What do you do? Are there tricks to getting something down in print that will give you a place to start – a bare beginning from which to take a leap of faith? Over the years, I’ve hit many boulders in the path to a completed manuscript.
Read Moreby Jason Black
First you need a fresh concept for the character, right? Sure. You don’t want to be giving us the same cliché, central-casting characters we’ve seen a million times. Then they have to be admirable in some way that helps readers root for them. That is, they don’t have to be likeable or nice, but there has to be something about them we can respect. And we can’t forget to give the character some flaws, too, so the character can experience personal growth through the story. Naturally not.
Read Moreby Noelle Sterne
Every writer needs an elevator pitch. This is not an esoteric baseball term but a short, punchy statement about your work. You can deliver your pitch not only on an elevator but on the Starbucks, supermarket, or close-out sale line or anywhere else a conversation starts. You need the pitch, especially after you’ve announced you’re a writer to the person next to you and you hear that dread question, “And what do you write?”
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
There are only a few rules regarding these combinations, and fortunately they are easy. First, put your fingers on your adam’s apple and say, “elephant.” Do you feel it move (your adam’s apple, not the elephant.) That movement is called a glottal stop, and you must keep the glottal stops of the beginnings of “either” and “or” together. If you start with “either,” you cannot go to “nor.” Conversely, you must keep the ns together if you start with “neither.” Do not combine them incorrectly.
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