I spent this weekend on a “staycation” with my family. We drove a few hours away from our house to explore the Colorado wilds, including Great Sand Dune National Park and trekking on winding mountain roads in search of fall colors. It was glorious. Quality family time, and I had a great excuse to not…
I had the good fortune of participating in RMFW’s Colorado Gold writing conference this weekend. While I attended several productive workshops, I found a few to be especially informative, including one about sidekicks in fiction. With the permission of presenters Mario Acevedo and Warren Hammond, I’m writing this post so you can also benefit from what I…
Pop quiz time. What do the following things have in common? Traffic jams Fish in the ocean The full moon appearing every month Negative book reviews If you answered they are all certain to happen, then you pass! Every book gets negative reviews. The Hunger Games, a book I absolutely love, has 443 1-star reviews.…
I recently wrote a post about why I write. It was a simple exercise in examining why I do what I do. A couple of things happened since then that made me want to expand on that topic – namely, a beta reader and critique partner bailed on my current WIP. They just stopped reading,…
As I’ve done more critiquing and editing, I’ve noticed certain trends creeping up repeatedly across a variety of texts and from a large handful of different authors. If they happen often enough, they become irritating – not bad enough to anger, but just enough to itch. You know, like that thing at the back of…
Once you finish writing your masterpiece, there are four things you should do: Have a celebratory drink. I enjoy wine or a margarita, but if you don’t drink I suppose iced tea can be fun if you put cinnamon in it. Let the book sit alone in a corner for a while to think about what…
A while back, there was a trending hashtag on Twitter about where writers get their ideas. This was my response. If only it were that simple. Many people think writer’s block is not being able to think of anything to write. It isn’t, at least not for me. It’s when you can think of things…
Let’s see what this week’s flash fiction challenge is, I think as I open my email. Chuck Wendig’s charge is this: write an essay about why you write. Huh. Okay. So I wasn’t going to write this one. I’ve sort of answered this question in author interviews and in casual conversation. What more can I…
If you plan to publish a novel, at some point you’ll have to write a blurb, whether it’s for a query letter or for the back matter of your book (and perhaps both). It’s that fun thing where you take your novel-length work and smash it into around 250 words that will make it stand out…
A little while back, my friend Dan wrote a post about his muse. I’ve been mentally returning to it since then, mostly because I don’t think I completely understand what a muse is. I know, a writer with a fuzzy muse sounds like a serious and, um, personal problem. I thought I understood the muse…
Allison Maruska 