Working on a first draft can be really challenging. There’s the plot to wrangle into shape, the conflict to ramp up, the characters to breathe life into. And there are a whole lot [...]

Here are writing links that I’ve posted to Twitter for the past week. If you’re looking for a particular topic, just plug in your keyword into the search box at the top left-hand [...]

Lately, I’ve not really been in the mood to read anything emotionally disturbing or heavy. Lately being the last couple of years. :) I grew up reading heavy literature in school. I read [...]

Looking for an agent can be a really overwhelming process. When I was first looking for an agent, that there wasn’t enough information out there online. Now it seems like there’s almost too [...]

Usually, when I think about plots, I’m thinking about conflict. But I keep running into the term “inciting incidents.” It’s usually a scriptwriting term but I’ve been hearing it more and more in [...]

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that I spend a good deal of my time on auto-pilot. Any rote kind of activity in my life—laundry, vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen [...]

I’d posted last week on my need for a little downtime to fire up my creativity. I think a lot of us are in the same boat, juggling family and job responsibilities while [...]

Hope y’all have a great Monday.  I’m in a couple of different places today, so hope you can pop by and say hi at one of them, if you have a second. First [...]

Here are writing links that I’ve posted to Twitter for the past week. If you’re looking for a particular topic, just plug in your keyword into the search box at the top left-hand [...]

For a little while I was in the dark (which seems to happen a lot). But then I noticed a particular pattern to conversations I was having with my daughter’s friends’ parents. “Elizabeth! [...]

I was at my primary care doctor’s office on Wednesday for a check-up and blood-work. (Fun-fun!) Anticipating the long wait I usually have at the doctor, I came armed with not just a [...]

The last few weeks have been really crazy for me. I’ve been working on a November deadline, working on revisions for a separate project, volunteering for Scouts, and trying to make sure the [...]

Monday afternoon seemed specially engineered to make me crazy. It started early in the afternoon. And we’ll substitute “snap” for all the bad words that I thought during those six hours. I was [...]

Over a week ago, I wrote a post about figuring out what your specialty is as a writer—realizing what you’re especially good at writing and then writing it. But I think it’s also [...]

When I’m working on a book, I spend a lot of time in the story’s world. I hang out with my imaginary friends. I think about what they’d do in different situations. I [...]

Here are writing links that I’ve posted to Twitter for the past week. If you’re looking for a particular topic, just plug in your keyword into the search box at the top left-hand [...]

Are you creative in lots of different ways? Or is your creativity specific to writing? Some of the most dreaded words I hear are “Let’s ask Elizabeth, since she’s the creative one.” Ack! [...]

Yesterday a good friend of mine flew into the Charlotte airport with a short layover. I figured it would be a great time to catch up with her in person while we had [...]

It’s always really interesting talking with readers about writing. Their questions are always really different from writers’ questions. In the past I’ve never noticed much similarity in the questions I get, but recently, [...]

The online community of writers is such an important resource for all of us. Writers share a ton of industry information, are supportive when we hit writing or industry snags, and offer tips [...]

I’m looking forward to meeting with a book club tonight at Uwharrie Books in Locust, North Carolina. Book clubs are usually a lot more fun for me than signings. At most signings, the [...]

One thing that I noticed during my book tour was how many people would like to be writers or authors. A couple of times, writers approached our table at signings. They wanted to [...]

Here are writing links that I’ve posted to Twitter for the past week. (And there are fewer tweets—I went on a Tweetcation while I was out of town.) :) If you’re looking for [...]

A few times this summer, we’ve gone out to eat with our son and he’s been dissatisfied with his meal. He was really excited about the food when he ordered it, but when [...]

I’ve basically trained myself to be creative on demand—and leave my muse out of the equation all together. Inspiration is too unpredictable—I seem to get better results from just old fashioned perseverance. But [...]

I was basically out traveling for almost two weeks. But—I still had writing to do. Actually, while I was gone, I had a call from my agent. I had revision requests on a [...]

It’s so good to be back and blogging again! I missed it more than I’d thought—and especially missed visiting with all of y’all! It’s been a busy couple of weeks, starting out with [...]

I’ve hesitated doing this, since I’m a creature of habit and I’ve blogged every day since May 1 2009. :) But looking at my schedule, where I’m coming back from the book tour [...]

Besides this blog, I’m on a few group blogs: Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen (Berkley Prime Crime mystery authors and our recipes), Inkspot (for Midnight Ink authors), Killer Characters (where cozy writers’ characters have taken [...]

Hope you’ll joining me in welcoming Wendy Lyn Watson to Mystery Writing is Murder today. Wendy is a fellow mystery writer and a friend of mine from the Killer Characters blog. Scoop to [...]