Organize Your Novel with Excel
By Laura Drake We’ve talked about it in other posts. How learning your writing process is finding your way in a pitch black room, full of furniture. You can learn by banging your shins, but there are less painful ways. Hopefully, this post will help. I’m an organized person, and it would make me crazy…
Read MoreHow to Slay Your Inner Editor
Don’t you love it when you find a new awesomesauce writing tool when you’re not even looking for it? Me too! I’ll try keep the backstory short (as good writers do, right? ;)) Back in the dark ages, when I thought myself invincible, I helped a friend move. I insisted I could lift the end of…
Read MoreHow to Tweak an Unlikeable Character
I admit, odd people fascinate me. The marginal personalities, the walking damaged, the wierdos. When I look back in my life, it seems I’m the Pied Piper of The Quirky (Or maybe it just takes one to know one ;)) They show up in my novels often. I’ve written a New York fashionista transplanted in…
Read MoreCadence – Writer’s Glue
What is Cadence? To me, it’s Like Porn, in that it’s not easy to define, but I know it when I see it. Webster did manage to define it though (which makes me want to look up ‘porn’): The beat, rate, or measure of any rhythmic movement A slight falling in pitch of the…
Read MoreAdverb Adverse
I’ll admit to being ‘adverb adverse’. It’s one of my reading pet peeves I’m reading along, immersed in the story when I start to notice them. And once I do, every one becomes a drop of water on my forehead, drip, drip, dripping until I want to heave the book. They irritate me enough…
Read MoreHow to Avoid the Dreaded Dialog Tag
by Laura Drake Okay, I admit it. I’m prejudiced against dialogue tags. Yes, I know they say, ‘He said/she said’ are invisible to the reader. They’re not to me. Even if you don’t share my pet peeve, why settle for something so boring? You write a sparkling line of dialogue, and slap ‘he said’ on…
Read More3 Writing Lessons Learned from a Roomba
By Laura Drake About ten years ago, I had back surgery. After I healed, I went back to Domestic Goddess duties, but found I couldn’t vacuum anymore. Something about the pushing and pulling killed my back. So I informed Alpha Dog (did I mention he’s also Texan?) that this duty would have to fall to…
Read MoreTracking Time in your Novel
It seems I’m always confessing in my blogs. I’m not sure I want to know what that says about me, but I know wherever my mother is, she’s proud that she had some influence. But that is, as they say, ‘a different meeting.’ I suck at tracking time in my novels. You know — how…
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