I am slowly starting to get back into the swing of things after my surgery and am finally beginning to have enough brain that I can think. Since I’m doing a talk on this subject for my Discord writing group this week, I figured I’d revisit the Beat Sheet and story structure. I’ve done several...Read More

Author voice is a concept that is far too often mistaken for other things, so I want to start by defining what voice isn’t. I start there because the majority of times I’ve ever dealt with an issue regarding author voice are situations where an author develops a mistaken idea of what their voice includes....Read More

When we start writing, we often start with a grand idea. A plan. An aspiration. When I was in high school writing my first “novel” (it was 40 pages in Word), I wanted to write this epic romance novel. I named it “Chapter One” and had this female author get sucked into the world of...Read More

Being an author also means you need to maintain that public-facing image. Which means marketing, acting appropriately in your public spaces, sharing parts of your life with the world (not all of it, but some), and so on. You are an author, not just a private citizen.Read More

There is this insidious mythology out there in the writerverse that once your book is picked up by a publisher (or you self-publish), you no longer need to do anything except sit back, bask in your own genius, and rake in the profits. Unfortunately, that cannot be further from the truth.Read More

I’ve done posts about this before, but I will say it again: Marketing is probably the hardest part of being a writer. Sure, writing is difficult, and editing can be painful, but marketing is often so anathema to the very foundations of our souls that doing it feels like the psychic equivilent of nails on...Read More

I keep having to make grumpy TikTok videos and Twitter posts because I keep running into bad writing advice. So much of it. Everything from, "word count doesn't matter!" to "editing is a waste of money" to "all critique is equal!" There's just so much of it, and it never fails to make my hair...Read More

Let me start by saying I don't hate long books. However, when it comes to the book publishing industry, there are a lot of reasons why your epic fantasy isn't being published. And, contrary to popular opinion, it has absolutely nothing to do with dwindling attention spans or readers not wanting it.Read More

I don't do pantsing because with my ADHD, I'd wander off into the weeds and get lost or write something incomprehensible. I know. I've done it. The manuscripts I have from high school are, well. . . Let's not talk about those. 'Tis a silly place.Read More

The point of a genre isn't to pidgeonhole your book. The point is to market your book to people interested in what you're writing. Ultimately, the key here is to remember that your genre is nothing more than a marketing tool; it doesn't really describe your book.Read More