Tag: write better

All the Other Boys, a short story

All the Other Boys, a short story

New Short Story, Now Available!!! Amazon US, UK, CA Smashwords Nook Apple iBooks   A kooky and hopeless young woman recounts the spectacularly awful rise and fall of her first real relationship. Spanning five years of earnest loyalty to this young man, she discovers the truth about sex, 

character profiles: Jodie, for example

character profiles: Jodie, for example

I’ve shared this (or some version of it) on some of my other writing blogs, but I don’t think I’ve ever shared it here. This is an example of the character profile questionnaire I use. Feel free to “borrow” any of these questions for your 

time in a bottle: on short stories and time spans

Short stories are often thought to be the story of a moment. Where a novel can cover years and years worth of time, the given wisdom is that a short story rarely covers more than a very succinct period of time, like a week, a 

on story webs: this is what my brain looks like

I hope this doesn’t blow anyone’s mind, lol! I’m tweeting all the time about my 23-or-something books in progress. This is to let you know that I’m totally not joking. For a while I was talking about Leslie’s story, which I thought was going to 

toys for writers to play with: my favorite writing prompts

First, congrats to Annie, winner of my EWTF paperback proof contest this week!!! I have a book to send you!!! 😀 I love random things. I love it when I can throw together a few wildly different traits, and come up with something original and 

EWTF preview series: on visual inspiration

Today, we’re going to talk about visual pinboarding! Using Pinterest: Authors have been saving picture pinboards for much longer than Pinterest has been around, though I will say Pinterest makes things easier. (Ethically I have doubts about its fairness, but you know, it’s so USEFUL! 

toys for writers to play with, part 2: editing software

First of all, if this needs to be said, no piece of software will ever write your story for you. And no program will ever be able to replace a human editor either. A machine cannot tell you if your story works or not. It 

toys for writers to play with, part 1: Liquid Story Binder

My friend Nina was the one to introduce me to Liquid Story Binder. I’ve been meaning to write something about this program ever since I got it, but I keep coming up blank. It’s very hard for me to put into words exactly how much 

two ways to feel better about your writing… and other assorted updates

#1: read your old college writing, you know that writing you were sure was so good, that you were sure would be published some day? And oh, is it bad! Rest assured that you are a better writer now. #2: try some other hobby as 

one of those kind of books

My book is about a lot of things. On the very first page of my notebook, I have a list of all the things my novel is about. Some of them are vague and abstract (fragility and unexpected strength?), and some are less vague (a