5 Ways to Improve Your Writing Style

Why is it that two different writers could write in the same genre, write about the same ideas, plot devices and themes yet one writer creates beautiful prose while the other makes the reader never want to read again? Every time I write a chunk of prose that really sings through the initial first draft,

Scrivener Addict: Why I Won’t Go Back To Word for Novel Writing

I really can’t remember why or how I found out about Scrivener, or as I like to call it “The Novelist’s Friend”.  I downloaded it back in December of 2011 and use it every day.  Many of my friends who really know me look at me with raised eyebrows and crooked mouths when I mention

Pulling Back on the Reigns

I’ve never really ridden in a horse drawn carriage much in life, (but if these gas prices keep going up I may soon do so) but I think of the horse drawn carriage as a perfect metaphor for my writing process. Think of the horse as the wild animal of my imagination, the carriage as the finished product,

To Be Verb or Not To Be Verb

In the fall of 1990 (gosh that dates me) I attended one of my first college creative writing courses.  I had graduated from high school in ’89, and was known as a writer of horror fiction in my small rural school.  Suddenly I found myself in a bigger pond with bigger fish and felt completely

Bored With Your Own Writing: 5 Things To Do To Not Become Stagnant

I wrote 6 chapters and did tons of research on my latest novel until I really hit my stride and found out that I would have to rewrite the entire thing.  I’m still writing a post-apocalyse novel about the biblical end times, but the effort I put into the first six chapters bored me silly.

Top 10 Cool Things About Scrivener

I know I’ve written a great deal about Scrivener on my blog, but really, it is one of the best programs for writers out there, and has the potential to help any writer boost their skills through organization, ease of use, and production to multiple formats. First, get the program here.  It costs $49, which

The Myth of Writer’s Block

I have taught AP Composition for over 10 years.  One of the things that students always complain about is what they call “writer’s block”.  I am convinced, after years of writing, that writer’s block does not exist, and is a concept created by a media culture to explain a simple phenomenon of laziness. A great