Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Writing”
“Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul.” — Meg Rosoff Writing is a peculiar occupation and one I’ve wanted to do …
Do you see some of your favorite inspirational historical fiction writers in the picture above? Five of us got together on Book Talk with Cara Putnam to talk about our books and why we like to go back in time to write those stories. Each of us has a new release and if you go over to Cara’s website here, …
Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other. – Walter Elliot Back in 2008 when I started this blog, One Writer’s Journal, I gathered quotes to share on the middle of the week post. Later I started doing two full posts each week and have kept it up for all these years. This post …
Only a couple more weeks until the release of my new book, When the Meadow Blooms. So I thought this would be a good time to share some outakes or scenes cut from the book before it was published. I sometimes tend to be wordier than necessary. I know you all can’t believe that! But some scenes are better without quite as …
Some time ago on Facebook, maybe 2009, somebody challenged me to name seven things about me as a writer that people might not already know. That list popped up on my Facebook memories. Those memories are one of the best things about Facebook. Last week memories of March snows kept popping up to make me glad for the sunshine this …
Just because you know my name doesn’t mean you know my story. That is a slightly enhanced version of a quote attributed to Jonathan Anthony Burkett. “You know my name, not my story.” Sometimes that’s where I am when writing a new story. Names are important to me as I try to get to know my characters. I have a …
A novel needs a good first line. It needs every line to be good but that first line in your story needs to grab a reader’s interest. Those few words need to be a flashing pointer toward the rest of the story. A good first line can also help a writer dive into the story. Most writers, including me, work …
Happiness consists more in conveniences of pleasure that occur everyday than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom. ~~Benjamin Franklin Where do you feel happy? And if you found such a place, how often would you make every effort to go there? This would be a place where you would feel loved and worthy and safe and …
A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. ~The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951) There’s truth in that first sentence of Graham Greene’s novel. A writer does have to pick that moment to let her characters come to life and …
“Help me to continue writing through those black moments of discouragement when I feel that nothing I write is good or worthwhile or will ever be read by anyone.” (an excerpt from A Writer’s Prayer by H. Joseph Chadwick) From the time I got hold of my first notebook and pen, I wanted to be a writer. All those lines …