#NaNoWriMo: Day 2—How to De-Angst Novel #Writing

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...

The Craft of #Writing: The Workbook Productivity Hack

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...

The craft of #writing: ratcheting chapter tension

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...

Wordsmithery: ignite your #writing with best-selling-author metrics

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...

#Writing style: adverbs to modify “said”?

(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...

Fantasy #Writers Dot Org 4th Annual Weird Christmas Entries

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...

Pirate’s Luck: Chapter 15~The Long Way to N’sen

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...

The #Writer’s Craft: Word Counts, Story Length & Story Structure

(Beth Turnage Blog) I’ve written several posts on Quora on writing and thought I’d curate some here. You can call it laziness, but really it’s a lack of time since ghostwriting is keeping me very busy. Really. 😉 How do word count limitations affect what you can fit into...