Professional Writer Series

Chapter 3 — Story Starters and Where to Get Ideas

Note: If you’re interested in Irish food, clothing and other unique items, visit Celtic Clothing. This past Christmas season I ordered two sets of Guiness pint pub glasses. When the order arrived, there was only one set. When I emailed them, they apologized, explained that their supplier had failed, and then refunded the full price of my original order, almost $50. They insisted I keep the first set of pub glasses as a gift and apologized … Read more

Chapter 1 — What Do You Mean, Character-Driven?

Folks, Before I give you Chapter 1, a shout out to an excellent writer, Sara Therese and her most recent blog post, which I hereby declare Required Reading for anyone who enjoys good, strong, emotional writing or Love. You can find it here. Okay, here’s Chapter 1 — What Do You Mean, Character-Driven? Staple it to the inside of your eyeballs, folks: All good fiction is character-driven. No matter the genre, fiction isn’t about the science … Read more

Writing the Character-Driven Story: Introduction

For these special posts, I’m providing only an excerpt via email. Please click Read More or Read On near the bottom of the email to read the entire post at the website. Remember, you can get this and other of my works by subscription now at a substantial savings. To learn more about that, click the Subscribe to My Work tab on the website. About the Blog Version Writing the Character-Driven Story is going to be … Read more

Announcing a New Subscription Service

Hi Folks, This is a revised post from earlier. First, if you’ve ever felt you’re starting too late in life as a writer, please visit Dean Wesley Smith’s post on the topic. You’ll be glad you did. Second, the next post in Pro Writers, probably around the end of this week, will be the Introduction and maybe the first chapter of my new nonfiction title, Writing the Character-Driven Story. I will post successive chapters here, free, … Read more

Something New

Hi Folks, I’m about to try something I’ve never tried before. One of my goals this year is to write at least six nonfiction books on writing or publishing. To help me achieve that goal, I’m going to publish them right here first, on this blog, one chapter at a time and free of charge. I will announce each book here when I start it. Then, each time I finish a chapter of the book, I’ll … Read more

A Very Brief Post

Hi Folks, A very brief post today. First, I wish you a happy Christmas Eve, a Merry Christmas, a happy and prosperous New Year, and an overall happy holiday season. I also invite you to check out my Journal for today. Anytime today, please visit This Link. I’ll be updating the post until around 3 p.m. To make it more valuable to writers and the curious, from this day forward the Journal will contain an introduction … Read more

Setting Goals — 2016 Is Almost Here

Hey Folks, If you’re a human being with dreams and aspirations, this is a great time to be thinking about what you want to attain or achieve in 2016. If you’re a writer, that means thinking about goals. At the minimum I recommend setting a daily writing goal, one that automatically resets at the beginning of each time period. If your goal is to write 1000 words per day and you meet or exceed it, great. … Read more

A Revised Baker’s Dozen: Thirteen Traits of a Professional Writer

Hi Folks, I’m sending this out a little early because, darn it, it’s the Christmas season and I wanna give you a few presents. I’ll slip in an appropriate post on the 21st just to keep the routine of every ten days going. That’s when this one would have gone if I’d left it to its own devices. First, Merry Christmas. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope you have an enjoyable holiday season. Also, I … Read more

The Journal, Tuesday, 12/15

Hi Folks, Back on track for writing during my quiet time. In fact, during the wake-up, I wrote an article, basically, to rebuff a HuffPo article in which the author got pretty much everything wrong. As my response was not really long, I’m including it in this post. For reference, the full Huffington Post article is here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/apple-taxes-authors-patie_b_8711882.html I hate it when such obviously slanted stuff is offered (and bought, unfortunately, by many writers) as fact. … Read more

The Journal, Sunday, 12/13

Hi Folks, Today is the first day of me going back to writing earlier instead of allowing my quiet time to be taken up with other nonsense. I’m allowing myself a half-hour to an hour and a half administrative time. During that time I’ll check and respond to emails, update my Fiction spreadsheet and tend to other administrative matters. I’ll also take care of the kitten and come here to begin the Journal entry for the … Read more