It’s kill my darlings time. Major revisions a-comin’. Seasoned writers talk easily about it—the need to delete descriptions, characters and…
A few weeks ago I finished the first draft of a novel for 4th-5th grade readers, and set it aside…
In the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Poets & Writers magazine, John Stazinski (page 29) bemoans the tendency of MFA programs…
A little love came my way recently. Richmonder Marci Rich, who writes The Midlife Second Wife, nominated my blog for…
At the mid-Atlantic SCBWI conference last month, keynoter Han Nolan said, “When a story scares me so much that I…
This past Saturday while speaking on a panel at the James River Writers Conference, I choked up and found myself…
The smoky odor from a too-hot furnace…a hint of honeysuckle…the racket of bullfrogs—these were the details that brought last week’s…
While I was drafting this post, my son peered over my shoulder, and said, “Mom, TL:DR: too long; didn’t read.”…
In mid-March, as I staffed the James River Writers (JRW) table at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville,…
Voice. Sympathetic characters. Narrative pace. Dialogue tags. Emotional arcs. These are the sorts of topics we tackled at Vermont College…