I spend a lot of time online and in person with writers, and so come October it seems like everyone is talking about one thing: NaNoWriMo. That’s National Novel Writing Month, where writers sign up in mass to write an entire novel, of at least 50,000 words, during the month of November. When I say writers […]
In 2005 I took a college class on writing memoirs. We learned a lot about creative nonfiction, and one of my takeaways, almost a decade later, is that there is so much you can do with words in nonfiction to make something matter. You can take something insignificant and transform it into something significant just […]
A while back I was in charge of a youth activity, and we decided to do sugar cookie paintings. Luckily I tested it out ahead of time, because the first set of instructions I found on the internet created a complete flop. I did some more searching and my second attempt worked much better. Step […]
A few weeks ago, I took my daughters with me to Oregon to visit relatives. We spent four days at the beach, mostly in the Newport area. While we were at Nye Beach and Seal Rock beach, I gave my 3 year my cell phone and let her take pictures. It was pretty cool to […]
An emotion beat is what makes the novel or short story distinctive—we can be inside a character, experiencing the emotion with her, and that makes the reading experience powerful. For it to work, the right emotion beats must be used in the right spots. In Part 1 of my series 10 Keys to Writing Story […]