This past month I was one of the logistics people behind the best-kept secret on the writing conference circuit: the…
During one of JRW’s twitter-chats (#jrwc12) with upcoming conference speakers, we were posing questions for Kristen-Paige Madonia, author of Fingerprints…
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club begins like this: Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing…
My agent nixed the novel I finished drafting earlier this year, and it’s taken me a couple of months to…
Here is yesterday’s fabulous post from io9.com: The 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar, written by storyboard artist Emma…
When lots of characters are introduced at the start of a novel, I can’t keep them straight. No matter how…
It’s kill my darlings time. Major revisions a-comin’. Seasoned writers talk easily about it—the need to delete descriptions, characters and…
In the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Poets & Writers magazine, John Stazinski (page 29) bemoans the tendency of MFA programs…
While I was drafting this post, my son peered over my shoulder, and said, “Mom, TL:DR: too long; didn’t read.”…
For a few years, I’ve had the privilege of serving as a primary-level reader/judge for James River Writers’ Best Unpublished…