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
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
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
Hi Folks, Okay, first, wishing you a Happy New Year. May it be everything you want it to be. As I write this, I recently visited Dean Wesley Smith’s website (link below) and read some of the comments there. The comments are almost always as informative as the posts themselves. In fact, I regularly pass along tidbits from his site over on my Daily Journal. (Subscription info below.) To sign up for my diary of a … Read more
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
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
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
Hi Folks, Right up front, let me say if you have a browser you like, one that works for you, then you might want to just skip this post. I’m not putting this up here as a source of argument, but only to help those who might have found themselves in the same situation. There are a lot of browsers out there that are NOT Internet Explorer (or the upcoming Edge) or Google Chrome or Firefox … Read more
Hi Folks, As you can tell by the date, this post is not part of the regular rotation of posts on writing (and writing-related matters) that come out on the 1st, 11th, and 21st of each month. But it will be important to at least some of you. 1. I’m posting to my Daily Journal again. As the name implies, that Journal comes out pretty much every day. Mostly it is a diary. In it, I … Read more
Hi Folks, Taking a little break today for a short post and some fun. At least I hope you’ll find it fun. “Aphorism” is defined by dictionary.com as “a short pithy saying expressing a general truth.” My aphorisms sometimes come out as definitions (ala Ambrose Bierce) and are most often satirical. Here are a dozen of mine. Remember, these are tongue in cheek: apology, n. A device intended to soothe wounds and thereby put a victim … Read more