Did you get all July Fourthy this year? For me, not so much. It’s hard to feel that star-spangled pride when there’s so much strife, upset, misery, and death. The shine, this year, is off. Don’t worry. I’m not going to turn the RMFW blog into a political platform. But those brutal, long minutes in…
I just had the most amazing opportunity to fill out a publisher’s Publication Information Packet, and when I got to the dedication section, one of the three “thank yous” I had to mention was RMFW. Why, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve been writing for more than forty years. I’d sold several articles, and…
A few years ago I was reviewing an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) of a thriller novel. At one point, the lead character met someone in a bar and ordered a whiskey. Three pages later, he finished his beer. I stopped, turned back three pages, and read through them again. Nope, he didn’t order anything else….
GoodReads has a whole section on quotes about writing by household names like Stephen King and Annie Dillard and Mark Twain. Hemingway and Faulkner and Salinger jump in, too. Some quotes are wise, like Sylvia Plath’s assertion that “the worst enemy of creativity is self-doubt” and some are blunt like Chuck Wendig’s “try very hard not…
In my writing critiques I often advise authors to use more strong, active verbs and fewer weak, passive verbs. Yet, when it comes to verbs, strong doesn’t actually mean active and weak doesn’t actually mean passive, even though that’s what they are often labeled today. Starken und Schwachen Verben When I was an undergrad I…