Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Writing”
What word is almost universally understood no matter where in the world you might be? That word is OK, and yet in the history of words, it is relatively new and a word I sometimes avoid in my historical stories. It isn’t OK to let my characters speak words nobody would have said in whatever time period is the setting …
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” — Louis L’Amour And Louis L’Armour knew how to turn that faucet on. This is a record of his work. L’Amour eventually wrote 100 novels, over 250 short stories, and (as of 2010) sold more than 320 million copies of his work. By the 1970s …
A few years ago shortly after I published my first Shaker book, The Outsider, I talked to a book club in Washington state. They were having just their second meeting as a book club and they had picked my book. They must have contacted me to have a call-in at their meeting. I’ve always thought being in a book club …
“Do you like your name?” That was the question I asked at the end of my last post. Then I asked what name would they have rather been called if they didn’t like their name. One reader, Sharon, turned the question back on me. I have named hundreds of characters in the over forty books I’ve written. Each book has …
“Letitia! What a name. Halfway between a salad and a sneeze.” ― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight “Jason scratched his head. “You named him Festus? You know that in Latin, ‘festus’ means ‘happy’? You want us to ride off to save the world on Happy the Dragon?” ― Rick Riordan, The Lost Hero I taught some writing classes at the Kentucky Christian Writers Conference …
This is a favorite keyboard. I used it for years. I wore away many of the letters from the keys. It has dents in the bottom row made by my fingernails. My thumb rubbed away a section of the hard plastic space bar. I surely have a space bar callous on that thumb. This hasn’t been my only keyboard. I’ve …
“You never climb the same mountain twice, not even in memory. Memory rebuilds the mountain, changes the weather, retells the jokes, remakes all the moves.” – Lito Tejada-Flores No, I’ve never had the urge to climb mountains. I like to hike up trails into the hills, but I’ll leave the actual mountain climbing to others. But when I saw this …
Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. ― Louis L’Amour Last post I shared my first sale. It wasn’t exactly the first thing I had gotten for writing. When I was in sixth grade I wrote an essay about wanting to raise chickens and won 100 chicks. When I was in 8th grade …
If you’ve been reading about my writing beginnings and subsequent journey, you know that I had the writing dream as a preteen and that I just kept on dreaming through my teen years and even after I got married and had two babies. If you missed the earlier posts, the links are at the bottom of this post. In …
“Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood—you will either write or you will not—and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.” —Jim Tully, Writer’s Digest I’m not sure if you all are ready to keep following me down my writing road, but in case a few of you are still interested, …