The September issue of Writer’s Digest has an article by Gabriela Pereira titled “The Great Revision Pyramid.” I was eager to read the article, as I’m working on a major rewrite of my second novel. In the article, she talks about how non-writers might think that once the first draft is written, the book is […]
Nab your first publishing credit
Writing is hard. Getting anyone to read your writing is even harder and getting anyone to pay you for your writing is the hardest. With that said, I’ve managed to do it a few times, so I’d like to share some quick advice on how to get your first short story published. Let’s start with […]
What makes horror work?
My comfort food is horror movies. Of course, I don’t usually eat while I watch them, unless we’ve got a bag of Pop Secret in the pantry, but you get my point. Everybody has something they do to de-stress, and for me, scaring myself silly for 90 minutes seems to do the trick. That love […]
Three Reasons to Consider Token-Paying Markets
How much should you be paid for a short story? When speaking with other writers, I’ve heard some say you should only submit to professional markets that pay a minimum of $.05 per word and others who say you should you respect the art of writing enough to do it for free (those are what […]
What makes a story a story?
Something hit me when I was going through my folder of unfinished stories the other day. No matter the size of the story–some were only a few hundred words while others were several thousand–they all had one thing in common. For every story in that folder, I thought, “Hey, that’s a pretty cool idea,” followed […]
Is your first draft automatically your worst?
“Good stores are not written. They are rewritten.” I’ve seen that quote attributed to everyone from Phyllis A. Whitney to Stephen King to Michael Crichton. I’m going to guess that it’s from Phyllis A. Whitney, since she lived to be 104 and would have therefore had time to come up with all sorts of nifty […]
Feeling Overwhelmed?
In a recent post at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers blog, Patricia Stoltey asked: What if You Want to Quit Writing? She asks in the article, What if you haven’t achieved as much as you’d hoped, or worse, you’re just beginning and are feeling overwhelmed and suicidal? While I rarely, if ever, feel anything remotely […]
Where does your story begin?
It seems like a simple question, but it’s not as easy to answer as you might think. Take out one of your WIPs and look at the first page. What do you see? Is it a heavy description of the setting? Is it a flashback or a wordy telling of the back-story? Is it an […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- …
- 42
- Next Page »