I am pretty lucky; working for a newspaper I have access to editors and proofreaders that normal writers may not. I try to make their lives easier by doing self-editing, but I do this with caution. It's kind of funny; I can edit other people’s stuff, but we get blind to our own writing. I love to ask the opinion of friends and readers or use Beta readers. But if you self edit, here are some important tips. Tips For Self-Editing: ☆ Wait six months or more. That [...]
In 2002, I picked up my grandson from school. He was in second grade. I looked through his backpack for assignments and found a piece of paper it said, "I can't believe what I saw." I asked Logan if he wanted to help me write a story with those words. He said, "I don't know how." So I told him I would help. I kept thinking about those words and where I was when I saw the paper we were leaving the grade school. The playground was in [...]
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had this idea swirling around in my head of knights and dragons, young heroes and cool magic. Over the years I toyed with a lot of different ideas but nothing really stuck until around 2003. It was then the idea came to me and one little story evolved into The Fallhollow Chronicles, a Young Adult trilogy that spans worlds and simultaneous dimensions. The trilogy is steeped in love: love for family, love for boy, love for girl. Even ideas and [...]
It was a combination of bad timing and perhaps my own naivety that caused me to originally abandon my first novel before it finally made it to print last year. (The Nestries, A Fairytale for All Ages) After being rejected repeatedly, I took a short sabbatical, visiting with my brother at our beloved childhood home. We often discussed issues he dealt with every day in caring for his mother-in-law who was suffering from dementia. She was now having hallucinations, he said. Although they were disturbing to her, my [...]
For most of us, writing can't always be our top priority in terms of time management. We have jobs, school, family, social obligations, grocery shopping, errands, and a ton of other stuff that has to be done, but that chips away at the time we'd rather spend writing. It's hard to find time to think about stories, let alone write them, in the swirl of daily life. One of the most frequent questions I've gotten since the publication of my novel, The Life and Death (but mostly the [...]
An iceberg is a stunning sight, rising high above the water, gleaming boldly in the sunlight. However, there is often much, much more ice below the surface of the water, supporting that which is easily seen. The iceberg above the surface, visible to those who search, could never exist to the naked eye without that hidden, deeper, often much larger part. The hidden, secret ice is an integral part of the entire iceberg, as important to the whole as the smaller part which is visible. So it is [...]
Nearly a year ago, around the middle of February, I sat out to write down a few memories. For years, my husband and I have joked about the things we've done, the experiences we've shared and the characters that have floated in and out of our lives. Many of whom became family, and others only a phone call away. We've worn many hats, lived in several states, owned biker bars, ran stock cars, driven eighteen wheelers OTR and surrounded ourselves with a plethora of unique individuals. Mostly bikers, [...]
I am 78 years old, and my love of writing began over 30 years ago, as I sat quietly each morning, asking God to teach me what He wanted me to learn from His Word – the Bible. Day by day He began to highlight a certain verse, or a passage or a chapter from His word, and impressed on my mind a thought about it. I began by writing down those thoughts, and as this continued I began to get the impression that others could learn from [...]
For those who don’t know me, and I realize that’s probably most of you, I am a middle aged mother of three teenage boys, who also happens to be a singer-songwriter. Some might think that being the mother of three teenage boys would provide plenty of fodder for songwriting, but that would not be accurate in my case. I don’t write about my sons, or my location, or my dog, or anything about my day to day life. I write love songs. I write heart wrenching, gut punching, [...]
Of course, there is a difference between fact and fiction. It is the job of the writer to selectively disregard facts, to reimagine and rework them into stories fantastic, but I believe Mark Twain got it wrong when he said: “Never let the truth get in in the way of a good story.” He should have said, “Always make the truth the way of your story.” As you learned in your high school English classes, the mark of an enduring work of fiction is that it explores and [...]