Online reviews have changed the entire retail and service landscape. You can look up nearly anything: a product, a service, and immediately see what people thought of it. Churches. Doctors. Historic sites. Everything is subject to being rated. People have had opinions about books since the form existed. But for a long time, these opinions…
With a certain loosening of restrictions we may have more external demands on our time, much as we had pre-pandemic. Remember the Before Times? Yes, there was a Before Time and there will be After Times. Or maybe, depending on your comfort level, you’re still hunkering down. No matter, if you’re so inclined, writing, be…
Last spring I finished what seemed like the “book from hell”. Every chapter felt dredged from the depths of my creative soul. Like getting water from a well running dry, I could only scoop up a bare teaspoonful of story at a time. It got worse when two thirds of the way through I realized…
If this were a typical year, I would be attending Colorado Gold conference this month. Besides a few workshops and the social activities, I would make sure to attend the editor and agent roundtables, where “the experts” answer questions and give advice to aspiring writers. Over the years, the questions asked at these programs were…
Recent social isolation has left us in our own bubbles with much less contact with other writers as sounding boards for our work. Living in an echo chamber, while it may make us productive in terms of word count (or not), may also have allowed us to drift back into bad habits we thought we…