I wrote for a couple of hours in the coffeehouse last week. A couple of hours is a pretty long writing session for me. I got nearly a chapter written on the second [...]

I thought that, after writing a post on James Patterson—the top book marketer—that I’d write a short post on J.D. Salinger—the anti-promoter. James Patterson and J.D. Salinger shared the same publisher: Little, Brown [...]

Thanks to Terry Odell for guest posting for me today for my Writing Process series on Mystery Writing is murder! Terry’s books straddle the mystery and romance genres and you can find out [...]

“I have a saying,” Patterson told [the interviewer]. “If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for a few friends, get a blog. But if you [...]

“Where do your ideas come from?” Writers frequently tag that question as the single most frustrating inquiry we get from non-writers. It’s frustrating because it’s nearly impossible to answer. We get ideas from [...]

Maybe your protagonist is an international spy. His days are rarely boring since he’s always hopping a plane to a dangerous spot on the other side of the world. Or not. For most [...]

There are books out there where the protagonist works his way through the plot solo, without friends to bump ideas or thoughts off of. Without close advisers to interact with. Without friends to [...]

Headshots and short bios are useful to have around. Even if you don’t yet have a book deal, you’ll need a picture and biography for any contests you might win or guest posts [...]

I read a lot of blogs during the week and get a lot from what I read. Sometimes I read something that really stops me cold and makes me think. When I read [...]

I was checking out at the grocery store yesterday with a shopping buggy jam-packed with food. An elderly African American man came up in line behind me with cucumbers and a bottle of [...]

I had a few comments yesterday on my slush pile post that asked for more detail on how I negotiated my contract with Midnight Ink in 2008. At the time, I didn’t have [...]

Helen Ginger on her excellent blog, Straight from Hel which follows and reports publishing news and trends, linked to a story in the venerable Wall Street Journal that proclaimed the death of the [...]

Martin Luther King day was a school holiday for my children. The evening before, I got an email from my friend. “Could we set the girls up with a playdate at our house [...]

I have two manuscripts that are in the pre-submission stage. One is far along in the process—in the hands of my agent and going to Midnight Ink in ASAP, and the the other [...]

I’ve been thinking about 2010 plans for my blog and there were a couple of ideas I had for guest posts this year. Also, I wanted to update my bloglists in the sidebar [...]

When I got my daughter’s 3rd grade newsletter (when she finally returned to school after her bout with the flu), there was an entire page on a new technique they were using to [...]

After my post, Time, I got an email regarding my first drafts and the speed with which I write them. The reader was interested in getting some tips on speeding up the process. [...]

I had a disaster Wednesday, similar to what you’d find in one of my Myrtle Clover mysteries. I realized after my daughter had been up for several hours, that her cough sounded different [...]

This fall and winter have really tested my nursing abilities. Unfortunately, both my children have the seasonal flu right now. One of those kids has already had H1N1 recently (October.) I’ve been busily [...]

I’m guessing we’re all trying to see if we’re on track as far as scheduling different writing tasks. For what it’s worth, here’s my average total for different activities. It varies some days, [...]

I cut off the rest of this one-page synopsis of Disney’s Pocahontas, which has Avatar’s characters and plot plugged into it…I didn’t want to create a spoiler for the movie, if you haven’t [...]

I’ve said before that the biggest moment for me in getting published was when I determined what I wanted as a writer. There are so many directions that you can follow with writing. [...]

“So, what are you working on now?” Do you mind telling people about your WIP (work in progress)? Or does it make you grit your teeth when they ask? Do you wonder why [...]

When I was a kid in the late 1970s in Anderson, South Carolina, I’d sometimes have to go to the drugstore with my mother. This was not a fun trip for me. Other [...]

I was driving back from having lunch with my husband yesterday when I saw a little tableau playing out on the side of the road. Well, the road was actually a major highway [...]

Yesterday I wrote about books and manuscripts with wooden prose and a flat delivery. Ways I thought a writer could jazz up the writing a bit were by changing the voice, revising the [...]

Have you ever run into really flat writing? It’s the kind of wooden writing you see from many non-writers. Desultory, lifeless. There’s no passion at all in it…just a straight narrative. A retelling [...]

My daughter was a little bored yesterday afternoon, so I offered to play a game with her. I didn’t want to play a long game with her (like Monopoly), and it happened that [...]

As I mentioned on Thursday, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to become a better writer. You can use your library card and get more information than you can ever [...]

Yesterday I stretched myself a little. The stretching exercise involved the garbage disposal, which spitefully kicked the bucket on New Year’s Day, following a visit by my husband’s family. I grabbed the phone [...]