Arekan’s Blog: Not Another Feline Overlord

(Arekan’s Blog) Arekan: Scribe, what is THAT doing here? Beth: (Innocently): What? Arekan: Don’t give me “what.” After three years of blissful peace, the brown cat returned. What? It couldn’t find another sucker to feed it, so it came back to you? Beth: You are confused. Arekan: I have...

The Craft of Writing: Creativity, Neurochemistry, and the Writing Journey.

What Makes a Writer? The making of a writer involves both nature and nurture. Scientists have found highly creative people’s brains are structured differently from those of less creative individuals. The building blocks of creativity in writers are often hardwired, influenced by how their brains process neurochemicals even before...

An Author Interview With Kelleen Rynin

(Beth Turnage) I recently took a writer’s workshop, Young Adult Novel Writing with Emily Colin at Authors Publish. One of the exercises was to write an interview with your character. Since I’m working on Master’s License, I chose 14-year-old Kelleen Rynin, the protagonist of the story, which was very...

Kick Start Your #Writing Using AI: #4 Summarize Your Chapter

You’ve written an outline, and things are going great. You are cooking on all burners and the story is flowing—until it isn’t. Maybe, you got a brilliant idea during a chapter, or a character gets rowdy, and takes it over, or—you know how it is. The chapter that is...

AI Secrets to Kickstart Your Writing: #3 Dig for Research Info

One of my favorite benefits of using AI is its ability to gather research information in and ordered list for your consideration.However, you must exercise caution in using this information, as Chat is prone to fudge its results. You should check it against internet sources. Yet, the wealth of...

AI Secrets To Kick Start Your Writing: #2—Outline Your Chapter

What’s the biggest obstacle a writer faces? Even if you have outlined your book. Staring at the page for the start of that new chapter. Endlessly. All writers do this—even famous ones. Take, for instance, Sylvia Plath: Sylvia Plath (from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath) Monday, July 7 (1958):...

5 Stellar Ways to Use #AI in Your #Writing—#1 Rough Outline Your Novel

Forget the controversy over whether to use AI in your prose. This issue will shake out as writers use AI more and develop best practices in writing fiction with AI. This tool can help you with mundane writing tasks that help to speed up your work without arguments over...

The Craft of #Writing: Fact Check Your #AI

ChatGPT is an amazing tool, but like all resources used for research in your writing, you need to recheck the information it provides. Below is an example of today’s research: Beth: Good morning. How does weightlessness in space feel? ChatGPT: Good morning! Weightlessness in space is a unique and...