This last month of writing has been about stepping back and taking a look at what I have written from a different point of view. I have been reading over what I have written, a practice I try not to do until five or six chapters in, that way I am too invested to throw…
Resilience may be one of the most underrated of characteristics; as human beings it seems that the world is increasingly asking us to up our resilience game. As human beings who also happen to be writers, resilience isn’t simply a nicety, it’s obligatory. Being a writer who lacks resilience is like being a car that…
Every work of fiction is fueled by some grand conflict or tension, but on the paragraph-to-paragraph level, the story gains momentum through micro-tension. Author Donald Maass states: “Micro-tension is the moment-by-moment tension that keeps the reader in a constant state of suspense over what will happen, not in the story but in the next few…
With one week left before the deadline to enter the Colorado Gold Literary Awards, we are receiving more entries every day. I’m not here to discuss procrastination (plenty of other posts have already been written about that) but rather what a writer might be doing in those final days before a deadline, be it for…
For my second novel, Blindspot, I ventured into a new genre, that of psychological suspense. It’s the type of book I gravitate to as a reader and I’m a long-term fan of anything in the mystery realm (I devoured the entire Agatha Christie oeuvre when I was sixteen) How hard could it be? Insert hubris…