by Doug Lewars

If you want to become a better writer, become a better editor.

If you want to become a better editor, edit work that is not your own.

I recently joined a local writers’ group and was requested to comment on various extracts from group members completed and in-progress work. I quickly found a number of recommendations I could make for improvement, but what came as a bit of a surprise, was when I went back and started editing some of my own work, I found exactly the same things there. One common mistake is using names too frequently when a pronoun would suffice.

Continue reading The Importance of Editing →

by Lauren Sapala

When I was in college I took a class called Fantasy Literature, which I thought would be nothing but fun and actually turned out to be a lot of hard work. On the first day of class, our professor told us that we would be reading one book a week, and a paper on that book would be due every Monday. The class collectively groaned, until he smiled and said our papers only needed to be one page long. Then we all cheered. And that’s when he got this wicked little smile on his face.

Continue reading Why Query Letters and Synopses Are So Hard to Write (And How to Get Through it) →

by Liam Cross

My Unwritten Rules For Writing

Me, personally, I’ve always been a huge believer of two key things when it comes to writing, and those things are: writing every single day in some way, shape or form, and also, branching out in your writing and walking into any unexplored avenue you uncover.

Continue reading Why Writing Poetry Makes for Good Storytelling →

by Helena Fairfax

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you’ll know I write contemporary romance novels. All my stories centre on the relationship between the hero and heroine, and they all have a feel good factor and a guaranteed happy ending. They’ve been described as “beautiful reads”, “gentle, old-fashioned romance” and “guaranteed to leave a smile on your face”.

The question is, is this the type of book I also love to read? I’d say definitely yes, but I also read a whole range of other genres, from crime to biographies to literary fiction, and – after thinking about this question – I think the genre I love the most besides romance is science fiction.

Continue reading Why I Write Romance But Love Science Fiction →

by Lauren Sapala

For the longest time I had major problems doing revisions on my writing. It seemed so easy for everyone else. Why was it so hard for me? Of course, I also had trouble writing. I hardly ever experienced that state of “effortless flow” everyone talked about, in which the words just magically spewed out of me down onto the page. For years—a lot  of years—I felt like something was wrong with me. I felt like I was a failure as a writer.

Then, I discovered something.

Continue reading Stuck With Your Story? Why You Keep Hitting Walls and Dead Ends in Your Writing →

by Kathryn, TFR

Keeping in a similar theme with last week’s post about unique sources of writing inspiration, this week, I’m going to talk about finding sources of PRODUCTIVE background noise.

No, that does not mean pulling up your favorite show on Netflix or Hulu to listen to while you work (In the interest of complete transparency, I’m writing this after starting the fourteenth season of CSI. Do as I say, not as I do, people).

Continue reading 6 Sources of Productive Background Noise →