Regency romance, romantic mysteries, & writing tips too.
Do you enjoy finding names for your characters when you’re writing fiction? Many authors don’t. Moreover, naming your characters has pitfalls. In one writers’ group meeting, an author told us about her cousin, who also writes fiction. They were chatting about character names. The cousin admitted that she’d never bothered checking her names with Google … Read more
Can writing apps improve your writing? Although they can’t write for you, they can get you organized and smooth the writing process. A big benefit: the best apps can increase your motivation, while cutting down on procrastination. A few months ago, our writers’ group chatted about writing apps. We all had our favorites. However, some … Read more
When you’re writing a novel, do you begin at the beginning? We discussed our favorite strategies for starting a novel at a recent writers’ group meeting. Most authors in the group said they write chronologically: they began at the beginning and write to the end. Several authors however wrote according to their inspiration. “Stepping stones,” … Read more
At a recent writer’s group meeting, we discussed writer’s block. This affliction is real. It can paralyze you. Almost everyone in our group has suffered from it, so we discussed useful tools and strategies to help us to manage it in the future. If you’re dealing with it right now, ask yourself whether you can … Read more
One of the biggest challenges in writing fiction is finding truly good ideas. We discussed finding great ideas in a recent writers’ group meeting. Several authors maintained that the perfect idea hit them after they’d started writing about a character who intrigued them. Some authors relied on inspiration and others said that they had too … Read more
In our recent writers’ group meeting we discussed writing fiction and the fraught topic of outlining. Those of us who are pantsers wince when we hear the word: “outline”. Pantsers don’t do outlines; we write by the seat of our pants. We feel guilty about that, so we experiment with outlines every few years. It … Read more