My Fantasy-Writers.org buddies and I enter a writing contest each year called Weird Christmas, run by Craig, who enjoys the strange permutations of the Christmas season. Unfortunately, most of those that entered didn’t make it to the final cut, as what happens in publishing. It’s a very competitive business....

Ask a Writer Asked and answered on Quora. The Original Question: Is it worth to be an author? It’s the best thing ever, but not for the reasons you think. 1) Your time is your own. You can wake up when you want to, sleep when it suits you,...

Even if you despise outlining, give it a shot. A few hours of outlining with save days of beating your head on your laptop. Trust the woman that writes novels for a living on a deadline. An outline will give you a clearer idea of where your characters are...

One of my writing friends on FWO asked me to write about I how I organize my work so that I’m productive in my ghostwriting business. Everyone has their own writing process. What works for me may not work for you. But I’m glad to share my tools to...

Like a pinball, your story bounces around in your head, hitting your occipital lobe, hippocampus, and the front of your brain, lighting them all up with the act of creation. If you are a master writer, you light up the caudate nucleus, which handles skills gained over time. Creating...

Having worked as a ghostwriter for eight years, writing nearly every day while working quickly and efficiently sparked my need to develop ninja wordsmithing skills. And for this, I turned to machine-editing tools. When I first started, I suffered some backlash from my writing friends. The common sentiment was...

The power of Goodreads is that it is a reader-driven site built on networks of people who enjoy the same type of books that you write. ...

(Beth Turnage) A Quoran posted this question: What is wrong with using an adverb to modify the word “said”? And here is my take: This is an offshoot of “showing vs. telling.” When you use an adverb you are “telling.” “Telling” is a less immersive reading experience, and often...

Craig over at Weird Christmas hosts a flash fiction contest for the Christmas holiday. A group of us at Fantasy-Writers.org enter en masse to try our luck in a submission challenge. We don’t do it for fame or glory, though there was a small amount of money for the...

The tank’s water shot shards of cold through Arekan as chilly as the deeps of space. With a shiver, Arekan realized this compartment had no shielding for the cold of the black, and if he didn’t drown first, he’d die of hypothermia. The only positive outcome of this disaster...