Regency romance, romantic mysteries, & writing tips too.
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
Thinking about writing a book while you’re on lockdown? It should be easy. You’ve got the time, after all. Unfortunately, when you sit down to write, your mind goes blank. After ten or 20 minutes of staring at the computer screen and hating yourself, you get up and turn on the TV. In an online … Read more
Let’s look at some useful writing tips for 2020, courtesy of our local writers’ group. (Original post from December 2017; edited and updated) Writing tips: start with a process Ouch. I used to have a writing process, but that vanished this year, due to workplace chaos. I wrote about an easy writing process here, and … Read more