Dreams are what keep us alive. Once you stop dreaming–once you no longer have anything to shoot for–you stop living. Anyone reading this blog knows that my goal (my “dream”, if you will) is to make it as a professional writer. Anyhow, in a recent post I talked about my writing goals for the rest […]
10 Quick Writing Tips
1. The word “that” can often be left out without changing the meaning of the sentence. 2. Don’t obsess over your word count. Write every day and your word count will take care of itself. 3. Writing is easy if you don’t put too much thought into it. Just get the words down and worry […]
When is a scene worth keeping?
Revising a novel is difficult. A big part of the revision precess is cutting. It’s not easy to do, but there are plenty of parts that need to be cut. One thing I recommend is to break the entire thing down into individual scenes. A yourself the following questions for every single scene in the […]
Why You Should Write Short Stories
One thing I often hear from new writers is that they are having trouble finishing their first novel. I can completely understand why that would be a common problem. It’s a daunting and scary task to write 50-100K for a new writer, especially if it’s the first thing he or she has ever written. When […]
Hello, my name is Jason, and I used an adverb one time…
Adverbs. You know, those pesky little helper words that make up 75% of most English Comp I papers. Those things that you’re supposed to limit as much a possible if you write genre fiction. Those things that can take a tight 2000 word short story and turn it into a 2500 word crap-fest if you’re […]
Three Things Every Aspiring Writer Should Know
Every now and then I’ll have a friend or colleague or stranger on the street tell me that they’d like to try writing some time, but for whatever reason haven’t yet started. To be honest, there is only one thing holding an aspiring writer back from writing. Whatever the external excuse may be, the real […]
A Sense of Urgency
In order to draw in a reader, the author needs to create an emotional connection between the reader and the story. That’s one of the most important, and perhaps obvious, writing facts I know. But I’ve been looking at it the wrong way. I kept thinking that that emotional connection is brought in by creating […]
Dealing with Criticism
You know, I’ve written a few articles about rejection on this site, but I haven’t every really touched on criticism. In my head, they’ve always sort of gone hand in hand, but in real life, it’s not like that at all. When a rejection comes, it means that’s it. That particular editor doesn’t want your […]
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