Hopefully, over these last couple of weekends, you’ve discovered and embraced your area of creative genius. There’s no greater feeling than knowing you are operating in your areas of giftedness. The question now is do you want to make the greatest impact you possibly can in the world? If so, you need to use your time and resources pursuing those things. In other words, I’m not gifted in the area of voice. I can sometimes carry a tune… if that tune is in a book that I’m moving from one room to the other. My contribution to the world will not be in song. So, if I really, truly want to make a difference, it simply would be a waste of time for me to take voice lessons. I’m not […]
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Don’t Forget the Details
I’m hacking my way through a first draft. I get frustrated with the first round of writing. Everything sounds corny, the same-ole-same-ole, and I either under write or over write. The scenes usually skim the surface of what’s really going on. I write things like, “she walked through a crowd of her friends, greeting them, air kissing their cheeks.” It’s because I don’t really know what’s going on yet. I don’t know how much detail I need in the scene. Sometimes it’s perfectly valid and needed to skim past a detail of friend’s names. Sometimes we don’t need the color of every dress, the table cloths and velvet curtains. But yea, sometimes we do. Most of the time we do. Susie was reading to me from the Pioneer Woman’s book […]
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6 Keys to success in your writing
I love May. It is a BEAUTIFUL time of year in Northwest Ohio. The evenings are still cool but the sun is warm. It is during this time of year that my business picks up, but my desire to work goes down. For those of us living in the north, the beautiful wreathing is counted in days rather than months. It can sometimes be hard to force yourself to sit behind the desk. That is why I wanted to share with you 6 success keys that I’ve used to maintain successful behaviors throughout the year [even when I want to play hookey!] Follow up- Each day follow up with someone or something. In the early days of your writing this may be nothing more than following up with your crit […]
Read the RestQuick Skills: How to Build Scene Tension
I just finished book 2 of the Hunger Games series, Catching Fire. Excuse me while I go pick up book 3 and spend the day ignoring my to-do list. This series is a lesson in how to create fabulous tension. Not only is the story premise powerful, but every chapter has that “can’t put down” quality. Why? TENSION on every page (as the Master Donald Maas would say!) But what is tension. Recently, I read approximately 1,768,639 contest entries. Okay, not quite that many, but it felt like it. And very few really wove real tension into their story. Obstacles and Activity are not Tension. Tension is a combination of a Sympathetic Character + Stakes + Goals + Obstacles + Fear of Failure. If any of these are missing, we don’t […]
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