Earlier this month, I had the honor of moderating my first BoucherCon panel, titled Walk the Line, Must Fiction Always Follow the Rules? In preparation, I set about determining which rules we might discuss and quickly discovered, as W. Somerset Maugham quipped, “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what…
Category: Writing strategies
How to Use Hybrid Forms to Build Suspense
In my MFA program, I learned about hybrid forms as a common technique in experimental literary fiction and poetry, but lately I’ve noticed it more often in the genre fiction I read. In his most recent novel, Horror Movie, Paul Tremblay interweaves scenes from a fictional screenplay with traditional prose. Brian McAuley uses the same…
Too Many Eyes?
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…
Writing to Survive
Back in October, I wasn’t sure I’d get to write these words: on January 13, I graduated with my MFA in Creative Writing. I started the program at Regis as one kind of person and ended it someone different. Not simply in the sense that I learned and grew as a writer, though I hope…
My Experience with a Reedsy Live Editing Session (with Tom Bromley)
First, I’d like to wish, wherever you are Edgar Allen Poe, a happy birthday. January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849. A free one-hour editing advice given by author, Tom Bromley via Reedsy, (Reedsy https://reedsy.com), was worth every cent—and more. Tom–author, editor, ghostwriter, creative writing tutor, Reedsy’s Head of Learning, and creator of the 101-day…