What Feedback Should You Apply To Your Story?

I started following this hilarious account on Twitter called Guy In Your MFA. He represents that potentially fictional, douchey guy who is obviously brilliant in his writing, wants to tell you how yours is all wrong, and will not accept that his work needs any changes whatsoever. Of course he’s a parody, but parodies are…

Do You Remember The Day You Stopped Singing?

I’ve been a legal adult for half of my life now, and I gotta say, we adults are screwed up. The prospect of growing up is scary to a lot of kids. Sure, they talk about how awesome it would be to eat whatever they want and not have bedtime, but the whole concept of…

Writing Pain In Fiction

Confession: I’m writing this post as a form of procrastination and it may be a bit wandering, but I think we’ll end at a coherent place. I’m supposed to be working through my editor’s notes for Part 2 of the Project Renovatio series (hereafter known as Project Liberatio, or PL). And I have been. In…

Is It Possible To Make Any Subject Interesting?

As I goofed around on the interwebs, I came across this image. So of course I started brainstorming – what are truly boring things a writer could try to make interesting? A potato? A rug? This post?? I suppose it depends on the details. Maybe the rug is Aladdin’s and you can ride around on it. Maybe the…

Getting The Smooch On: Writing A Kissing Scene

On Friday, as I scanned the posts in my blog feed, I came across Dan’s flash fiction challenge. It had an intriguing title: Kiss Me. That is, write a kissing scene. Now, while I’m not a romance writer (as some of the writers commenting in the challenge clearly are), the need for a kissing scene has…

The Next Layer Of Dialogue: Body Language

Last week, I participated in J. A. Allen‘s Sunday Scribble Challenge, wherein we write a brief entry in response to a prompt. This was last week’s prompt: Two sentences isn’t much space, unless you write a bunch of clauses with commas, and those aren’t my style. So I had to rely on something else to…

Four Steps Away From The Cliff

I recently had the privilege of guest posting for the lovely, talented, and funny Sarah E. Boucher on the topic of quit days. Since I’m not able to reblog directly, she’s allowed me to paste the post onto my own blog. Click here to see the original post and on her name to head to her…

In A Crowd Of Encouragers, Who Would You Draw?

This morning, I taught the third grade class in the kids’ area of my church. The lesson was about Biblical figures who persevered through difficult circumstances and those who encouraged them along the way. To go along with that, we completed a seriously cool project with the main point being this: when times get tough,…